Nothing in the OED entry for 'maven' suggests that it can't be used for either gender.

Yes, it's very irritating to have a name that the Americans have feminised.(But isn't Robin Williams an American?) It's clearly going the same way as Hilary and Jocelyn. (And someone tried to tell me not long ago that Augustine was a girl's name, and that it should be pronounced AUG-us-TEEN, rather than Aug-US-tin.)

I tell you, chaps, they're taking us over. First vicars, then Morris dancers, and now they're pinching our names .... where will it end?

I knew a couple called Robin (male) and Hilary (female). They had a devil of a time when they visited the USA.

Completely off topic but one of my father's middle names is Augustine and as children we thought it uproariously funny to call him by his full name but change Augustine to Disgustin' - oh how we laughed...

When I was a young boy, I told my parents I wished they'd called me 'Augustus', but I soon gave that idea up when they pointed out that this would mean everyone would call me 'Gussie.'

This phenomenon - of names once for boys becoming girls' names - has interested me for a long time. It also happened to Shirley (the eponymous hero of Charlotte Bronte's novel of this name was male). That happened thanks to Shirley Temple. But it's also happened with Evelyn and Vivian - think Waugh and Richards. I used to think it betrayed a cultural presumption that there was something ipse facto bad about being female, although now I think it's more male insecurity.

This post was last modified: 26-04-2014 09:37 PM by Tim Lund.

According to my Collins Gem Dictionary of First Names, 'Vivian' (Richards, Fuchs) is the male form and 'Vivien' (derived from French 'Vivienne') the female . 'Tennyson gave the name some vogue in the 19th century when he wrote the poem base on Arthurian legend called Vivien and Merlin.' But no doubt Tim has evidence that that distinction is not always kept!

I haven't read the Bronte novel, I'm afraid, but my information is that the eponymous Shirley was female - Shirley Keedar, an heiress of independent means, who ends up marrying Louis Moore. Wikipaedia says however:

Both Shirley and Evelyn are in any case arguably a bit different, because they were originally surnames (as was Leslie/Lesley) rather than male or female Christian names.

Evelyn Waugh's first wife was called Evelyn. They were known to their friends as the he-Evelyn and the she-Evelyn.

This post was last modified: 26-04-2014 11:31 PM by robin orton.

Thanks, Robin. I'm duly embarrassed.

Saw this today -

It's about "Under Milk Wood" and how Dylan Thomas made us love the words.

I never knew about the origin of the name of the fishing village!

Link is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zg786sg

Thanks, Triangle, very interesting. My favourite Dylan Thomas poem is Fern Hill, http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fern-hill. He uses all the devices mentioned by Owen Sheers (with the possible exception of onomatopoeia?) in a quite subtle way, but also uses imagery drawn from all over the place (including the Bible) to paints marvellous and evocative pictures of the transitoriness of human life and the way we can respond to it.

'Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.'

Sums up the humanist attitude to mortality perfectly. Arguably even better than 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'

During the 1970's, I knew a Welshman in Forest Hill who was a member of the London Welsh male voice choir.

The choir provided a very atmospheric backing for a performance of Under Milk Wood, which was being recorded at the BBC Maida Vale studios for Radio 4 - and he gave me a ticket to attend.

After the recording, we all got together for a few beers and a singalong – ‘twas wonderful boyo!

I increasingly come across 'I love to dance', 'I love to swim' etc in contexts where I would say 'I love swimming' etc.

'I love to swim' sounds wrong to me here. I would always use the verbal noun ('swimming') when I mean 'swimming is an activity that I love.' I would only say 'I love to swim' if it was followed by some additional phrase such as 'whenever I get the chance' or 'in a bracingly cool pool such as that at Forest Hill.' In other words when I am talking about a particular occasion or occasions for swimming, not swimming as an activity. Anyone agree?

And another thing. I heard BBC a (yes, really) announcer the other day referring to 'Nick Clegg's call-in on LBC.' What's wrong with 'phone-in'?

So you weren't on the dance floor back in '76?



I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance)

'Fraid not. I was vaguely aware that there was a song with some such title, although I didn't realize it came out as long ago as 1976.

To be honest, I hate to say this, but to use the infinitive is a well established usage of English.

1976 seems to be notorious for such trangressions.
[video=youtube]gDXGN55jz60[/video]

And ANOTHER. I demand an inquiry.

[video=youtube]TsIzw94NiJs[/video]

It may be well established, but it still grates with linguistic reactionaries like me. I'm clearly not the first not to have drawn a distinction between the use of the gerund and that of the infinitive in this context. See for example the discussion here, where I take the side of the pedants.

Nevertheless, I appreciate lacb's honesty and his or her commendable regret for being obliged to cause me pain - much appreciated.

This post was last modified: 02-06-2014 02:59 PM by robin orton.

Robin - maybe "I love to go a wandering along the mountain track" is more your era? Much to be heard in these parts from ice-cream vans!

(How do you post Youtube videos on this Forum?)

Indeed. My Auntie Dorothy took me to the De Montfort Hall to hear the Obenkirchen Children's Choir singing it in, I guess, 1953 or 1954.
In fact, I was thinking about that when I wrote my original post. 'I love to go a-wandering (when I get the chance to do so) .....'

I think my argument would be that it is usually idiomatic to substitute the gerund for the infinitive' ('I love going wandering' would be OK, if it scanned), but not the other way round ('I love to dance' instead of 'I love dancing.')

Use the [video=youtube] tag:

so to embed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkLTwX0duY4