On 02/12/16 00:18, Jeff King wrote: > On Fri, Dec 02, 2016 at 12:07:50AM +0000, Ramsay Jones wrote: > >>>> In a British context "Mallory and Irvine" were two (male) climbers who >>>> died on Everest in 1924 (tales of daring...), so it's easy to expect >>>> (from this side of the pond) that 'Mallory' would be male. However he >>>> was really George Mallory. >>>> >>>> Meanwhile that search engine's images shows far more female Mallorys, >>>> so I've learnt something. >>> >>> "baby name Mallory" in search engine gave me several sites, most of >>> them telling me that is a girl's name except for one. >>> >>> Didn't think of doing image search, but that's a good way ;-) >> >> Heh, I didn't think about any of this. I was remembering the >> description of 'Man-in-the-middle Attack' from Applied Cryptography >> (Bruce Schneier) which implies that Mallory is male. > > I admit that I always assumed Applied Cryptography (and other papers) > were always talking about a female. But that's probably because I > started with an assumption about the name in the first place. That > probably came from watching the Family Ties sitcom as a kid; the older > daughter is named Mallory (and if you google it, you can see some > amazing 80's haircuts and clothes). > > We can call her Marsha if you want, instead evoking Brady Bunch memories > of 60's clothing and haircuts. I'm not sure it matters too much, but if you are going to change the name then Eve is also used in the description of Man-in-the-middle (see "Practical Cryptography", Ferguson and Schneier). ATB, Ramsay Jones