Contents

OnoGraph Gender API Introduction

The gender API takes a name input and provides the probability of its gender on earth and in individual countries/jurisdictions. It currently provides results for 184 jurisdictions. See here for a list.

The API works by taking a forename (or first name) input, e.g.

Forename: Rocio

It returns the probability someone with that forename would be a male or female, on earth and in jurisdictions, e.g.

Jurisdiction ISO Code Gender Percent Sample Size
World f 99 365,034
Mexico mx f 100 163,288
Spain es f 100 112,387
Peru pe f 100 37,935

The result is provided as JSON.

Description of Fields

  • Jurisdiction - name of the jurisdiction the name occurs in
  • ISO - 2/5/6 character code for the jurisdiction, mostly from ISO 3166-1 alpha-2; see here for a list
  • Gender - most common gender for the name in the jurisdiction (f = female, m = male)
  • Percent - percentage of bearers who have the most common gender
  • Sample - the number of records from which the gender distribution is calculated from

For example, in the above it means the name is mostly female in Mexico, 100% of the people who bear the name are female and the percent was calculated from a sample of 163,288 people.

Accuracy

Using a sample with an equal percentage of people from 235 countries/jurisdictions the API returns the actual gender as the most likely gender in 89% of cases. It returns the most likely in The United States in 98% of cases. The 11% whose gender cannot be accurately predicted is largely due to names with ambiguous gender, which are primarily South and East Asian names.

The OnoGaph gender API is the most accurate gender prediction service and recognizes around 15 million more names than the nearest competitor.