> A short time ago, i decided to try and build an API that would try to guess the gender of a first name.
Obviously you need to run a test that uses a list of real people's names and genders to measure the method's accuracy. But remember the following points:
* People might resent any effort to pin down their gender in a commercial or advertising context.
* The negative outcome for a gender misidentification may be much greater than the positive outcome for a correct one.
* Gender-neutral names are becoming increasingly fashionable among well-educated parents, i.e. people who have money.
On that basis and in my opinion, unless you can get above 90% accuracy, it's not worth doing.
Some popular gender-neutral names:
http://www.babynames1000.com/gender-neutral/
http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/157282/25_best_genderne...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name#English
A quote: "Unisex names have been enjoying a decent amount of popularity in English speaking countries in the past several decades."