Sex Machine

This gem uses the underlying data from the program "gender" by Jorg Michael (described here). Its use is pretty straightforward:

>> require 'sexmachine'
>> d = SexMachine::Detector.new
>> d.get_gender("Bob")
:male
>> d.get_gender("Sally")
:female
>> d.get_gender("Pauley") # should be androgynous
:andy

The result will be one of andy (androgynous), male, female, mostly_male, or mostly_female. Any unknown names are considered andies.

I18N is fully supported:

>> d.get_gender("?lfr?n")
:female

Additionally, you can give preference to specific countries:

>> d.get_gender("Jamie")
 => :female
>> d.get_gender("Jamie", :great_britain)
 => :mostly_male

If you have an alterative data file, you can pass that in as an optional filename argument to the Detector. Additionally, you can create a detector that is not case sensitive (default is to be case sensitive):

>> d = SexMachine::Detector.new(:case_sensitive => false)
>> d.get_gender "sally"
 => :female
>> d.get_gender "Sally"
 => :female

Try to avoid creating many Detectors, as each creation means reading in the data file.

Licenses

The genderator code is distributed under the GPLv3. The data file nam_dict.txt is released under the GNU Free Documentation License.