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Yes. Don't attempt to infer gender from names.

Mostly, you don't need it. You'll often get it wrong. You may end up pissing off transgender people. Unless you are running a dating site (in which case, you should actually get people to specify which gender(s) they are—and, yes, people will want options beyond male and female) there is no need for it.

If you want to know my gender, ask. Don't infer.

I suspect this is more for data analysis than it is for user-facing features.

I hope.

This is far more useful for advertising, especially when trying to build user segments. If you have the gender from the user directly entering it somewhere along the line, great. If not, this comes in.

And in more cases than people seem to think, you really don't need it.