The other day I met a baby named Taylor. Do you think it was a boy or a girl? It was a girl.
The trend nowadays is to choose names that leave the sex of the child to be a bit of a mystery. Not to many boys are named Shelagh. However there is a lot of naming girls with the little boys names. There is also a lot nicknaming this way. For instance a little girl named Roberta easily becomes 'Bobby.' It is also easy for a James to become a Jamie.
One way to get a truly unisex name is to choose something unique and different for their babies. An older name that is more ambiguous works. A good example would be the name Forrest that is both a male and female name. Some of these names come from the family. For instance a girl named Danny might actually have a grandfather named Daniel. Same thing goes with a girl name Alex or Frankie. Sometimes a little change such as adding an 'a' as in Alexa can help.
Some baby boy names or masculine names used these days to name a baby girl are Troy, Tom, Donnie, Gabby, Wilson, Ritchie and Wilson. Some boy or male names can be modified in their spelling and pronunciation so that they sound more girly. Daniel becomes Danielle. Oliver becomes Olivia. Gabriel becomes Gabriella. In fact that is an excellent way of feminizing a male name. A very common examine of that is how Paul becomes Paula. Anton becomes Antonella. Lowell becomes Lowella. Robert becomes Roberta and Albert become Alberta. You see this a lot in fraternal twins. An example would be Ivan and Ivana. When in doubt add an a!
Going to very ancient place names can also be unisex. For instance Paris can either be a male or female name. In fact Paris Hilton went out with a multi-millionaire man also named Paris last year. Michael Jackson also named his daughter Paris. Another good example is Madonna's kid who is named Lourdes.
Other unisex names are derived from celebrates. For instance a child named Jagger could be either male or female. Famous weird unisex names are the Frank Zappa kid names – such as Moon Unit. Xavier is also a good example of true unisex name.
One of the few examples I can think where a male name is actually quite female sounding is Marion. In fact, John Wayne – the biggest tough guy ever was born as Marion. Also, remember the boy named Sue? It is actually spelled Su.
Another interesting phenomenon is people naming their children after objects. For instance the name Diamond could be either male or female. A good example of this is Gwyneth Paltrow's child, which is named Apple.