Determining Gender By Name with Python

Created at September 2023 using the Python Code Generator tool.

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Prompt

Write a function that determines the gender of a person
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Result

Sure, here is a simple Python function that determines the gender of a person based on their name. This function uses the gender-guesser library which is a Python port of the Java library gender-guesser used to guess a person's gender given their name.

Please note that this function is not 100% accurate and it's based on the assumption that certain names are more common for a certain gender. 

# Importing necessary library
import gender_guesser.detector as gender

def determine_gender(name):
    """
    This function determines the gender of a person based on their name.
    
    Parameters:
    name (str): The name of the person

    Returns:
    str: The gender of the person ('male', 'female', 'unknown')
    """
    
    # Create an instance of the gender detector
    d = gender.Detector()
    
    # Use the detector to guess the gender based on the name
    guessed_gender = d.get_gender(name)
    
    # The get_gender method returns 'mostly_male' or 'mostly_female' 
    # if the gender is not clear, we consider these cases as 'unknown'
    if guessed_gender in ['mostly_male', 'mostly_female', 'andy']:
        return 'unknown'
    else:
        return guessed_gender

# Test the function
print(determine_gender('John'))  # Output: 'male'
print(determine_gender('Emma'))  # Output: 'female'
print(determine_gender('Alex'))  # Output: 'unknown'
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To use this function, you need to install the gender-guesser library. You can do this by running pip install gender-guesser in your terminal.