name-to-gender 1.0.0

package/LICENSE

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+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2026 Michael Cummings
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

package/README.md

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+# name-to-gender
+
+Guess the gender of a first name from US Social Security birth data. Returns a
+**probability** and the **raw birth counts** behind every guess, not just a
+label. TypeScript-first, ESM + CJS, **zero runtime dependencies**.
+
+```ts
+import { guessGender } from "name-to-gender";
+
+guessGender("Adam");
+// {
+//   gender: "male",
+//   probability: 0.996,
+//   counts: { male: 523494, female: 2002 },
+//   name: "adam"
+// }
+```
+
+## Why another one?
+
+The existing name-gender packages are either inaccurate or unmaintained. Many of
+them tag common male names like Adam and Chris as female, and none of the actively-maintained ones return a confidence score you can threshold on.
+
+| package                      | data          | last updated | confidence | types   |
+| ---------------------------- | ------------- | ------------ | ---------- | ------- |
+| `gender`                     | US Census     | 2013         | yes        | no      |
+| `gender-guess`               | SSA 1930–2013 | 2014         | yes        | no      |
+| `gender-detection`           | mixed         | 2018         | **no**     | no      |
+| `gender-detection-from-name` | mixed         | 2025         | **no**     | no      |
+| **`name-to-gender`**         | **US SSA**    | **fresh**    | **yes**    | **yes** |
+
+## Install
+
+```sh
+npm install name-to-gender
+```
+
+## Usage
+
+### `guessGender(name, options?)`
+
+```ts
+import { guessGender } from "name-to-gender";
+
+guessGender("Mary");
+// { gender: "female", probability: 0.995, counts: { male: 7732, female: 1467208 }, name: "mary" }
+
+// Messy input is handled: full names, casing, accents, and punctuation.
+guessGender("  José Martinez ").gender; // "male"  (uses the first token, folds accents)
+guessGender("::Jenni♥fer::").name; // "jennifer"
+
+// Names not in the dataset return "unknown" with a zero probability.
+guessGender("Xyzzy");
+// { gender: "unknown", probability: 0, counts: { male: 0, female: 0 }, name: "xyzzy" }
+```
+
+#### Thresholding unisex names
+
+Some names are unisex. Pass `minProbability` to treat low-confidence
+guesses as `"unknown"` while still seeing the underlying numbers:
+
+```ts
+guessGender("Casey"); // gender: "male" (≈59% male)
+guessGender("Casey", { minProbability: 0.9 }); // gender: "unknown", probability: 0.59, counts: {...}
+```
+
+### `isMale(name, options?)` / `isFemale(name, options?)`
+
+Convenience booleans. Both return `false` for unknown or below-threshold names.
+
+```ts
+import { isMale, isFemale } from "name-to-gender";
+
+isMale("Ryan"); // true
+isFemale("Ryan"); // false
+```
+
+### Result shape
+
+```ts
+interface GenderGuess {
+  gender: "male" | "female" | "unknown";
+  probability: number; // P(gender), in [0.5, 1]; 0 when unknown
+  counts: { male: number; female: number };
+  name: string | null; // the normalized name that was looked up
+}
+```
+
+## How it works
+
+`name-to-gender` is **data-driven, not rule-based**. It normalizes the input to
+a first-name token, looks it up in a table of all-time US births by name and
+sex, and reports the majority sex along with its share. There are no `"ends in
+-a → female"` heuristics, which is exactly what makes the older packages fail on
+names like Adam and Joshua.
+
+The dataset is built from the public-domain
+[US Social Security Administration baby-names data](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/).
+It works best for US/English-context names. See
+[`CONTRIBUTING.md`](./CONTRIBUTING.md) for how to regenerate it from the latest
+SSA release.
+
+## License
+
+MIT © Michael Cummings