American unisex names

American unisex names are a recent invention, really — born from the postwar push to break from tradition and the late-20th-century move toward gender-neutral language. Names like Brooklyn and Kaylee started as place names and nicknames that anyone could wear, while Krystal and Latoya emerged from the creative respelling boom of the 1980s and '90s, when parents began treating name spelling itself as a form of expression. You'll find them across lines of race and class, each one a small rebellion against the idea that a name had to announce a gender.

What makes these names distinctly American is exactly that: the freedom to invent, to borrow from any source, to twist a sound into something new. Lizzie began as a diminutive but stands on its own now. Some are modern inventions; others are old names stripped of their gendered endings. Each entry lists its meaning and origin, so you can see whether a name is a repurposing, a regional pick, or something wholly made in America.

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