#LONG:#

I hate to post 'solutions' that don't solve anything, but this is somewhere between an XY Problem and something I wouldn't touch with a 20 foot pole.

Why are you bothering with the decomposition? Putting aside complicated questions of individual identification, storing that information is, by definition, derviable from and therefore redundant with your other data fields. This violates some basic DB design principles. Assuming you actually have a good reason for needing this data (see this Slashdot article, including the 4+ comments), unless you obtain it by an independent channel (self selected), you will always have a reasonable chance of being wrong.

As well, there are a lot of names in 'Anglo' that are gender ambiguous, depending upon your tolerances. Sam? Teri? Terry? Joe? Robin? Evelyn? Pat? Do you care more about avoiding false positives or false negatives?

How does the gender affect your app? If you are using it to map to a title, you are already wrong because of professional titles and the married/single split in female titles in English. And informally storing PII in a database is frequently asking for trouble.

#SHORT#

The result is subjective and unreliable; your problem is ultimately intractable; DNE.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In reply to Re: Extensive List of Names by Gender? by kennethk
in thread Extensive List of Names by Gender? by dandras6367

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