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Hello! > What gender is "George Eliot"? The only way to be rather sure of the answer to that question would be to ask the person in question, which obviously is quite difficult when they are dead. And if you ask a living person, there is no guarantee you get the same answer every time you ask. Including gender requires thus coupling gender to a date or time period to allow for changes. An other question would be how many genders to consider: less than three would be obviously highly inappropriate. > The years may be present in > the name heading, but only > when needed to distinguish > between similar names. This > turns out to be confusing to > non-librarians, who wonder > why we have the years on > some but not all names. Some libraries (for example the national library of Sweden) often have birth dates even when noone else has the same name. Regards! SaaĊĦha,