Gender-bending baby names are crossing conventional boundaries that define male and female names. Down at the very bottom of the Social Security extended list of baby names, among the hundreds of names given to only five babies in that particular year, are a few dozen names that have radically crossed gender lines.

　　I’m not talking about unisex names like Charley or Emerson that are widely used for both girls and boys. I’m not even talking about those names like Addison, say, or August, that are occasionally used for babies of the opposite sex but are predominantly given to children of a single gender.

　　I mean names that are universally considered boys’ names or girls’ names — except for the handful of parents who chose to use them for babies of the nonconforming gender. Girls named Eric, for instance, or boys named Karen.

　　Baby names crossing gender lines is nothing new — US records from the 1880s list girls named John and boys named Mary — but sometimes it’s all a mistake. Maybe the recording official noted the wrong gender or misspelled the name. Or perhaps the parents are from another culture and don’t understand that in the US, Louie is generally considered a boys’ name while Lucy is for girls.

　　But in this age of Social Security registration for newborns and digitized records, errors are less common and it’s more probable that those parents, for whatever reason, chose to name their baby daughter Oscar and their son Alice.

　　People, particularly people who happen to be berries, often have very strong feelings about this kind of thing. Keep names attached to their traditional gender, many say, including boys “taking back” traditionally-male names such as Madison that have become used mostly for girls. Other people feel that gender is an artificial construct and that names can and should be used free of gender considerations, as long as it’s done even-handedly.

　　But a lot more people still think that it’s cool for girls to “steal” boys’ names — as in the celebrity fad of naming girls James — but not okay for boys to be named Sue.

　　We want to know your thoughts on this issue. But first, the names from the 2015 Social Security list that were radical gender-benders:

　　Five baby girls were named:

　　Benson

　　Brian

　　Cecil

　　Colin

　　Duncan

　　Emanuel

　　Eric

　　Ford

　　Forest

　　Garner

　　Gavin

　　Hart

　　Jedidiah

　　Joel

　　Justin

　　Louie

　　Louis

　　Marcel

　　Maximus

　　Mercury

　　Omar

　　Oscar

　　Prescott

　　Warner

　　Weston

　　Wilson

　　Xavier

　　Zachary

　　Five baby boys were named:

　　Alice

　　Eliana

　　Elli

　　Hope

　　Honour

　　Inez

　　Karen

　　Kinsey

　　Lacy

　　Lucy

　　Luna

　　Naomi

　　Romy

　　So where do you stand?