"Why?"

"Well, we're all speaking different languages, so it's a little bit of guesswork what a given name is even going to sound like to anyone else, so you're more or less just picking a word or collection of syllables that you're fond of, except I don't actually - form preferences about words. I like actual peoples' names so I guess I could pull out a baby naming book and pick one - or the list of baby names popular in my year - but I know people with all of those names, so who am I going to step on? And if I really like a baby name I am going to name an actual baby that, I'm not going to use it on a nickname for invisible speed-up fairies, I don't like very many baby names and don't care to waste them."

" - that, except like any Noldo whose parents do not live in a cave in the woods for political reasons I had several decades in education on forming preferences about words."

"Oh, you can't actually try at that, it'll make you miserable, just get good at guessing what the person you're talking to will think."

" - that's what I did, yes."

"Oh no, I didn't know that."

"Of course not!"

"Does anyone else feel like there aren't enough good male names -"

Everyone else with 'male' as a category for names nods.

"What will happen if you give them a female name, will they explode? Get confused?"

"You can't just do that!"

"But why not, what happens."

" - well, people would be confused about the gender of your child, whenever you talked about them, and they would probably resent you for giving them a wrong-gender name, and people'd wonder what you meant by it... I really doubt they'd change their gender, people raised as the wrong gender still don't normally want to switch."

"Where I'm from a lot of names have become unisex or gone from male to female over time but it's very rare for it to happen the other way."

"Huh, any that in my time are boys' names that are girls' names now -"

"'James' was the one that really threw me when I first heard of an actress called that, the others were things like Harper or Forest or whatever that I didn't have strongly associated in the first place."

"There's magic to change peoples' sex? I can imagine some people wanting that, if it makes you fertile -"

"It does! It's pretty expensive but we'll sell it to you. Can't take it while pregnant, you lose the baby. - I guess you have no reason to especially avoid that."

" - well, people don't want to lose their babies!"

"Right, sorry, but here it's quite Evil and that complicates policy."

"Huh, if this had somehow become available without the attendant multiversal magic and the opportunity to be a wizard and stuff... no, probably still wouldn't have changed anything, you can't swap grey through Miolee unless you know somebody and it's not like I had a pen pal somewhere abroad..."

"Hm?"

"Anitam is one of the relatively rare countries in which caste is patrilineal so if I just avoid dating greys, which I'd probably do anyhow, my kids don't have to be."

"I'd go for it, if it was affordable, Kan and I could have genetic kids."

"I am extremely unwilling to be a woman and not just because they don't have very many rights here."