README

GenderFromName version 0.30 (PHP port)
================

NAME

GenderFromName - Guess the gender of an American first name.

SYNOPSIS

    require_once('genderfromname.php');

    print gender("Jon");    // prints 'm'

DESCRIPTION

This module provides gender(), which takes a name and returns one of
three values: 'm' for male, 'f' for female, or undef for unknown.

INSTALLATION

To install this module:

    Copy genderfromname.php to an accessible include directory

DEPENDENCIES

This module optionally requires:

    The doublemetaphone PECL module at
    http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pecl/doublemetaphone/

CHANGES

This was originally a Perl module available at http://search.cpan.org/~edaly/Text-GenderFromName-0.32/GenderFromName.pm
I've done a very mechanical port to PHP, so it's very non-idiomatic.

Version 0.30 is a significant departure from previous versions. By
default, version 0.30 uses the U.S. Social Security Administration's
"Most Popular Names of the 1980's" list of 1001 male first names and
1013 female first names. See CAVEATS in the pod documentation for
details on this list.

Version 0.30 also allows for arbitrary female and male hashed lists to
be provided at run-time, and includes several built-ins to provide
matches based on exclusivity, weight, metaphones, and both version
0.20 and version 0.10 regexp-style matching. The user can also specify
additional match subroutines and change the match order at run-time.

AUTHOR

Originally by Jon Orwant <orwant@readable.com>, v0.30 by Eamon Daly
<eamon@eamondaly.com>.

Ported to PHP by Pete Warden <pete@petewarden.com>

This is an adaptation of an 8/91 awk script by Scott Pakin in the
December 91 issue of Computer Language Monthly.

Small contributions by Andrew Langmead and John Strickler.  Thanks to
Bob Baldwin, Matt Bishop, Daniel Klein, and the U.S. SSA for their
lists of names.