Gender confusion over the name Shrinidhi!

Recently I realized, that it’s not only humans, even facebook applications are struggling to recognize the gender associated with my name. Many think Shrinidhi is a female name and address me as Miss Shrinidhi or Mrs Hande… Others who are not sure either avoid gender specific references in the communications or reluctantly ask how I should be addressed.

Problem is, my name defies a naming pattern traditionally followed in India. That is, all female names usually end with a vowel, particularly “i” or “a” (Mahishi, Arathi, Madhuri, Rani, Anjali, Savithri, Gouri etc or Asha, Usha, Kannika, Kareena, Karishma, Priya, Prema, Hema, Urmila, Maneesha, Divya, Megha, Radhika, Roopa and so on) and male names usually end without an vowel (when spelt in English)- Mahesh, Raveesh, Rajesh, Kumar, Manoj, Rakesh, Gopal, Ram, Vijay, Sundar, Nagaraj, Prasad, Preetham, Manohar … just to name a few)

Though we spot exceptions in the above said patters like Poonam, Neelam, Kajol, or Gopi, Mani, Venu and such most of the cases they won’t be severe enough to cause a confusion. . At times confusion is evaded by appending another term like Poolan-Devi, Mani-Shankar, Venu-gopalan, Devi-Prasad, Gopi-Krishnan and so on or some people conveniently add a ‘Kumar’ or ‘Kumari’ to their names that eliminates any possible confusion. But the word Kumar doesn’t sync well with Shrinidhi and I don’t want to force it. (Even if I wanted, it’s too late now)

But the noun Shrinidhi (Or Sreenidhi or Srinidhi or Shri Nidhi or Sri Nidhi or any such combinations) is a bit unusual and can easily cause confusion. I know many gentlemen with name Srinidhi (Some blogs and other references of Male Sreenidhi’s- Srinidhi Varadarajan , a police officer- N Srinidhi , Srinidhi of Carrolton, US, Srinidhi of Udyog Consultancy Services , Srinidhi Ramachandra and T G Srinidhi who writes regularly for Kannada media and has few books to his credit) but there’re some odds as well. There are few ladies like Srinidhi Chidambaram, and Srinidhi Raghavan who are a bharata natyam dancers based in Chennai. There may be many more, but above is what I could find through Google. If you know any famous Shrinidhis-male or female, let me know... Also just ‘Nidhi’ is a highly probable female name. A search for Shrinidhi in orkut returned 65 female users and 230 male users. For 'Srinidhi' I got 774 male users and 275 female users.

Sparing few inconveniences and embarrassments, it wasn’t an issue surviving with a slightly odd name

Some experiences:
Used to get gtalk invites from strangers (probably they picked my ID from some email forwards) who think I am a lady and if accepted, they would ping me whenever I am online and start asking personal questions. If entertained, the conversation would soon head to “I am coming to your city next month, shall we meet?” At that time I ask them to check my blog which has my photo. 100% of the cases never heard from them again.

Some departments and people who are otherwise lazy to respond or act, responded faster to my communications probably because of the reason they though I am a lady.

Many people address me as a lady without any hesitation-Like “Dear Miss Shrinidhi” or “she has to submit these document herself”. Unless otherwise necessary I usually let it go without making an issue out of it or trying to correct them. When I correct them, usually I get apologetic replies.

Some people who fall in dilemma hesitatingly ask for clarifications. Communications range from a simple “he or she?” to “Dear Shrinidhi, we’re sensing some uncertainty as to how to address you, due to confusion prevailing over the gender associated with your name. Please clarify!”
Having a unique name helps in better search engine positioning. If I had a very common name it would have been very difficult to come on top when people search for my name. Currently many souls lazy to remember/type my blog URL just enter enidhi or Shrinidhi in google and land at my blog. (I feel lucky!!!)

"Based on popular usage, it is 5.439 times more common for Srinidhi to be a boy's name. The popularity of Srinidhi is: 2.628 (where 0 = extremely rare, 6 = super popular)I am not aware of any deceased famous people named Srinidhi"-From: http://www.gpeters.com/names/baby-names.php?name=Srinidhi

Another site, Genderanalyzer feels that enidhi.net is written by man (with 68% certainity). Very close, but this site is not that reliable-several false positives-like Anita Bora and Mridula's blog it thinks are written by man.

But then, even Times of India mistook my name for a female and addressed me as 'her' in one of their clarifications...

So statistically speaking there shouldn't be much confusion that Shrinidhi is predominantly gentleman's name...Hope lady Srinidhis won’t declare a war on me reading this…

P.S: Did KarunaNidhi (TamilNadu CM) also face similar issues in his early days?

Update:

Please read below a Kannada write-up by me which got published in 01 Feb 2009 issue of Vijaya Karnataka, Karnataka's number one daily, Page 2 of Sapthahika Vijaya supplement.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

Update 2013: A lady Shrinidhi shares her experience at Nairobi terror attack. [News]
     
December 2016: Mangaluru girl Shrinidhi Shetty named Miss SupraNatural 2016 

October 2019: Some travel agents continue to do the mistake, despite providing all the info and uploading adhaar card

January 2020: There is a V Shrinidhi, Govt Advocate in Karnataka.