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Mikhail, nn Misha is all boy to me.

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I don't think Mesha is a legitimate name at all. Obviously it belongs to your friend, so in that way it is a name. But it isn't traditional.

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I strongly dislike parents using Misha for a girl.

Mesha can be anything, if it isn't pronounced MEE-shah (As Misha). To me Misha is one of the most masculine nicknames in the world, so I can't stand it for girls.

Misha is strictly a nickname for Mikhail in Russia, so Misha=male to me. Mesha looks like it should be pronounced 'mehsh-ah'. Misha is not unisex, no matter how much one tries to tweak with the spelling.

The only Misha I've known was a little boy, and he was Russian, so I think of it as masculine, although I can see why someone would think it was feminine. How would the -e- instead of an -i- necessarily make it feminine, anyway?

I think your friend's mom is wrong, too.

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I think of Misha as masculine, but to my ear, it has a soft and (almost) fluffy sound to it, so it doesn't raise my eyebrows to see it used on a girl.

Misha is masculine, like all the other Russian nn (Vanya for Ivan, Sasha for Alexander, etc.). I understand that English speakers don't get the whole 'male name ending in-a thing', but incorrectly spelling a name does not make it female.
I guess her mother did Francis / Frances thing, but with names from other languages it doesn't work that way. You can't just do Sofia / Sofea and call it masculine in English, so why would you be able to do it in a Russian name?

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Mesha just looks like a kre8atyve spelling and I would never pronounce it 'mee-shah', but 'me-shah', which is not the same name.

This message was edited 11/14/2007, 8:10 AM