Friday, December 12, 2008

On onomastic gender confusion

On two different final exams this week, students repeatedly referred to the authors Wendell Berry and Etheridge Knight as "she." It's easy to determine an author's gender simply by reading the brief biographical notes in the anthologies (or by paying attention to class discussions), but even a student who happens to overlook that information ought to be able to discern gender from the names--unless Wendell and Etheridge have suddenly become common women's names.

Maybe the problem is that they're not particularly common names at all. I've never known a Wendell who wasn't male, but I've known only a handful of Wendells, all elderly people, and I've never encountered an Etheridge. Both names sound pretty male to me, but I am reminded that not so long ago it was not uncommon to encounter men named Beverly. So maybe my students are familiar with a whole host of female Wendells and Etheridges.

Still, there's no excuse for not knowing the gender of an author when the information is readily available right there in the anthology and it's an open-book exam. When in doubt, read the bio! It's got to be less complicated than performing a spontaneous sex-change operation in the middle of a final exam!

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