The Most Androgynous Names: Equally Used Gender Neutral Names

Key Findings

• Charlie (just Charlie, yup, not short for Charles or Charlotte) is the most androgynous name. 
• Blake, Emerson, Finley, and Phoenix round up the 5 most common androgynous names.
• 1% of babies have androgynous names.
• A is the most common starting letter for androgynous names.
• Atypical spellings are more likely to be used androgynously than the more common spellings.
• Surnames are disproportionately androgynous. Some examples of this phenomenon include Landry, Campbell, Channing, Halston, and Linden.

Many gender neutral names aren’t truly neutral. Instead, while widely used by male and females, they are more predominantly used by one gender. This can lead to the recipients spending a lot of time correcting misconceptions and even unkind teasing in younger years.

However, there are some names that are blank slates. Names that for whatever reason lack the labels other names carry and are truly gender neutral.

We used data from the Social Security Administration to find the most androgynous, gender fluid names. You can read our methodology at the bottom, but first let’s see which names are used almost equally for male and females:

Most Androgynous Names

1. Charlie
2. Blake
3. Emerson
4. Finley
5. Phoenix
6. Tatum
7. Rory
8. Dakota
9. Ari
10. Shiloh
11. Alexis
12. Armani
13. Skyler
14. Azariah
15. Bellamy
16. Ocean
17. Jamie
18. Chandler
19. Layne
20. Justice
21. Robin
22. Ira
23. Landry
24. Campbell
25. Kacey
26. Yael
27. Joan
28. Sidney
29. Laken
30. Kit
31. Ever
32. Kasey
33. Jael
34. Gentry
35. Storm
36. Perry
37. Honor
38. Isa
39. Divine
40. Ashtyn
41. Armoni
42. Jules
43. Brighton
44. Channing
45. Iman
46. Halston
47. Linden
48. Taylin
49. Ridley
50. Sora
51. Issa
52. Auden
53. Huntley
54. Kobi
55. Wynn
56. Akari
57. Hudsyn
58. Loren
59. Wisdom
60. Lou
61. Valentine
62. Jackie
63. Itzae
64. Austen
65. Amen
66. Reilly
67. Timber
68. Unknown
69. Tenzin
70. Conley
71. Royale
72. Charleston
73. Koi
74. Lowen
75. Kirby
76. Amarii
77. Jadyn
78. Ryley

Androgynous names break traditional naming conventions by being gender fluid

In the United States, names are highly gendered. The majority of names are viewed as a “boy” or “girl” name. Even gender neutral names are still overwhelmingly used by one gender. The names listed in this article, by the numbers, break traditional naming rules by straddling the gender neutral line.

These androgynous names are a great starting place if you are looking for a name that is more gender fluid and undefined.

Want an androgynous name but none of these hit for you? Consider less common names. The lack of exposure often comes with less expectations. For example, Lexington, Renley, Aven and Hero are all infrequently used names with ambiguity.

However, do not let this list limit you. Names are constantly evolving and this is simply where the numbers stand now. Undoubtedly they will look different in 5, 10, and 20 years.

Methodology On Finding The Most Androgynous Baby Names

We used the most recent data on baby names from the .

From there, we determined use for both males and females. Gender neutral names are defined as any name used by both genders with at least 5% of occurrences by each gender. For example, 90% of the time Logan is used for males, but because it’s used by 10% of the time for females it is considered unisex.

To find names that are truly androgynous, we simply narrowed the list to names where less than 60% of uses were for either male or female. Our intent was to find names split pretty closely between male and female recipients. From there, we trimmed the list to only include names used over 100 times last year. Names below 100 tend to be more volatile and due to smaller sample size unreliable to categorize.

This gave us the 78 androgynous names featured above.