NameAPI is a web API
to handle people's names
in your software.

News

10.03.2023

Large Dictionary of Given Names

The NameAPI database of names counts a total of around 220.000 female, 285.000 male and 70.000...


16.02.2023

German Names Imported

German is a West Germanic language and it is the official language of many countries, including...


10.02.2023

More Research, Larger Name Database

The NameAPI database of manually reviewed names counts more than 590.000 given names from more than...


02.02.2023

Russian Names Imported

Russian is the most widely spoken Slavic language in the world, using the Cyrillic script.


26.01.2023

Irish Names Imported

Irish is a Gaelic language, part of the Celtic language family and it is one of the official...


Name Genderizer

Name genderizing is the process of identifying the gender based on a person's name.

  Examples by culture:
Examples:

  Examples by culture:
Examples:


  Examples by culture:
Examples:

 

Developer: see the technical specification of the REST service.

 

Process

Understanding the person's name is key to identifying the gender. Then it becomes obvious which name parts to look at. It's not always the first name!

Challenges

There are three reasons why a writing form of a given name can't be clearly assigned to one gender:

1. True unisex names, for example "Casey". 

This is also the case for many short forms or pet names, which can derive from given names with different gender:

Alex  => Alexandra, Alexander

Charlie  =>  Charlotte, Charles

2. Names that exist in multiple cultures, for example "Andrea".

In this case, identifying the culture is the key:

Andrea Bocelli => Italian => likely male

Andrea Berg => German => likely female

3. Detail is lost through transcription (or asciification), rendering distinctive names the same.

 

In all these cases statistics help: name statistics (census, birth lists etc) are used to calculate the chance for each gender.

 

Use Cases

1. Addressing a person

You don't know the person's gender, but you have to address him or her more personally. It just sounds better with a correct salutation than "Hi there!". However, if in doubt, we recommend to use a neutral salutation.

2. Customer segmentation

The gender can be a key criterion in selecting the right target group.

3. Person matching

Two name pairs may look similar. If the gender is contradicting, it's unlikely the same person.

 

Find out more

Read our white paper about name genderizing.