There seems to be a trend of transforming nouns (person, place, or thing) into verbs. I.e. "Stop bugging me!" instead of, "There's a bug on the windowsill. Around the turn of the century--while flappers jived--short, boyish haircuts became all the rage. Because of this, the word "bangs" turned into a noun, as in, "She just banged her hair." I wonder why verbs so seldom turn into nouns (there may be some cases in which this happens--I just can't think of any now). Perhaps because we need an object first, before we can describe movement manipulating that object.
Another interesting trend is that boys names often evolve into girls names--but never the opposite. For example: Robin, Beryl, Morgan, Leigh, Blair, Sidney, Lindsay, and Leslie all started out as boys names, but are now used almost exclusively for girls. Some names are unisex, like Taylor and Hunter. Other names are generally used as boys names, but are beginning to shift towards becoming girls names, like Drew (as in Barrymore), Charlie, Reese (as in Whitherspoon), and Payton. Curious. I can't think of a single girl name turned boy name. Is there such a thing? I'll keep you posted (no pun intended).
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