Jo–a girl’s name, Joe–a boy’s name

‘Jo’ is a girl’s name and a feminine one, ‘Joe’ is a boy’s name and a masculine one.

For a woman to have the name ‘Joe’ is extremely incongruous.

However the pronunciation of ‘Jo’ and ‘Joe’ is the same.

tinsoldier:

joe — Noun: 1. (informal) A male; a guy; a fellow. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/joe

‘Jojo’ is another girl’s name, but no ‘Joe-joe’ for boys.

Personal disclosure

I think I first encountered ‘Jo’ as a girl’s name as a boy in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and I thought it odd for a girl to have that name.

I thought Jody was a girl’s name also, but it is actually a name both boys and girls have, like Chris.

‘girl’ and ‘gueule’

After writing about Jo vs Joe, I remembered my French teacher asking us to think about the word, ‘girl’ and it was universally acknowledged it had a pretty sound.

Then he asked what we thought about the French word, ‘gueule’, which we learned meant gullet (but actually means mouth?), and we were shocked to realize we had always thought it had an ugly sound, despite being (almost?) the same sound as that of ‘girl’.

We had never connected ‘girl’ and ‘gueule’.

I don’t know what our French teacher’s intention was in doing this. Perhaps he was making a Saussurean point about the arbitrariness of the sign.

Tintle:

"girl" does not sound like like "gueule" at all

Voxel:

Tintle: Depends on accent, I guess

Tintle:

Well, maybe

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