The first names parents give to their female versus male children have different phonological (sound) characteristics. My work extends this from the real to the fictional world, studying name given by authors to their romance heroes -gay and straight—as well as to straight heroines. My corpus contains 2,536 contemporary romance novels: 1,668 with a male/female pairing and 868 with a male/male couple, resulting in 3,404 heroes (1,668 straight; 1,736 gay) and 1,668 (straight) heroines. Given that gay romance is a fast-growing sub-genre predominantly written and read by straight women, I explore possible cultural implications of this finding and how it may feed stereotypes and shape perceptions within straight and queer societies.
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