"No, I'm A Girl."

That's what a little girl I saw today will probably be saying a lot during her life.  Her name is Austin.  There has been a long trend of names that were once thought of as male names becoming seen as female names.  Names like Hilary, Ashley, Beverly and so on were once fairly common male names, but in recent decades have become almost exclusively used for women.  As a result most people would now think you were being kind of cruel if you were to name your son Beverly.  But somehow I doubt Austin will be joining the ranks of names used primarily by women.  It just sounds too masculine.  When I think of the name I think of the late Austin Willis, a Canadian actor and TV show host.  Others are likely to think of the long running British motor vehicle company.  Young Ms. Austin was with her younger brother, who is named Kingston.  Names ending in ston and stin seem very popular these days for some reason.  Of course there's the long shot that both these tykes were born in places bearing those names, but probably not given the number of kids with non-Saskatchewan place names you're likely to run into in Saskatoon these days.