Genealogy Forum UK

anyone know if back in 1912 could the name Leslie been a boy's name or a girl's name?

Leslie spelt that way is usually a boy, with Lesley usually a girl.

But, saying that I know of someone who spells his name Leigh, which is usually the girls way of spelling it.

My dad is Leslie and my daughter is Lesley. I have some male Leslies in my family before 1911, but I haven't seem any female versions that early.

You can play around on this site http://www.1911census.co.uk/

It looks as though Leslie is by far the more common spelling. I put in 1911 as the birth year and looked at the first few pages - they are nearly all males. Some of those down as female are probably male (Leslie Herbert for example) but there is a Leslie Iris.
If you put in Lesley for the same year then there are far fewer results. Again most of them are boys but there is a higher fraction of females.

So based on this quick look I would say that if you were born around 1911 and called Leslie then you were very likley a boy. If you were called Lesley then you were still likley to be male.

(And of course there is always the problem of parents being unable to spell properly when filling in the census).

http://www.1901censusonline.com/search. ... ith_locale allows you to put in gender as long as you put place of birth and year too so you can get results like these:

Born 1881-1901 Middlesex

10 Female Leslie
258 Male Leslie
2 Female Lesley
3 Male Lesley

I would not rule out a Leslie being female but unless you have a marriage for the person it could be hard to be sure.

thanks everyone, I will go on Leslie being a boy, he was born in 1912 so he/she was not on the 1911 census

Moved to miscellaneous section

My grandfather was Leslie.
If a female is spelt as Leslie, could it'd have been because they didn't realise there was a difference?