Gender Distinction in European Spanish Anthroponyms

The Spanish language does not contain any morphological markers that theoretically determine a person's gender, so it is common usage that enables us to deduce this characteristic. Nevertheless, we have referred here to several sources, including a longitudinal quantitative study from the 1930s to the present day using the databases of Spain's National Institute of Statistics, a corpus of the most frequent surnames and given names, and surveys on onomastic attribution. The aim has been to identify current trends in gender representation in Spain through both a structural and attributive approach, with the following conclusions: hyperfeminization of girl names, differentiation (the masculine -o or consonant endings) in boy names, the disappearance or feminization of traditional common names, the use of gender-neutral names in response to current mores, and gender hypercharacterization of transgender names.