Guessing Genders using Google Sheets

If you have a list of names and you want to guess their genders, here’s a nifty utility developed in Google Sheets that you will find handy.

A detailed version of this blog post is available on my website here:

Guessing Genders using Google Sheets and using API

Google Sheet Design

This Google Sheet contains two tabs:

Guessing Gender

The columns highlighted in yellow are input columns, and the ones highlighted in green are output columns.

Database

This Google Sheet contains a tab called ‘Database’ where all the gender information is stored. The Guessing Gender tab pulls information from the Database tab to guess the gender of the person based on their first name. It also comes in handy to add gender information for a new name or edit gender information to Unisex, as and when needed.

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How to Use?

Execution

• Paste the list of names, as values, in column B of tab: Guessing Gender.
• If you have a unique identifier for each name, that could go into column A in tab: Guessing Gender.
• Go to the Menu bar at the top, and from the top-level menu, Genius, click on Guess Gender — a Google Apps Script. (Check this post to learn how to automate your spreadsheets using Google Apps Scripts.)
• The script will guess the gender for each name in column C: Guessed Gender.

Corrections

• If the guessed gender is ‘Unisex’, or appears to be the opposite of what you thought, use column E, Manual Correction, to update it.
• If column D, Guessed Gender, doesn’t guess anything, you can add those values in column C, First Name, at the end of the tab: Database in column A, First Name, and add Gender information in column B, Gender. The tab will automatically update the gender information for these names for which the value in the Gender column was previously missing.

Outputs

At the end of this exercise, columns A, B, F (Unique ID, Name, Gender) will be your output and you can download these columns to use in your subsequent work.

Contact

Website: amitsarda.xyz