Just curious, when you talk about Erin and Aaron being the male and female versions of the name, are you pronouncing them the same? Because I pronounce them differently. Similar, but clearly different.
yeah I was wondering why these two names were being lumped together. They are pronounced differently! Erin has an "err" sound, like as in "to err is human..." or error. Aaron has an "aar" sound like "baron" or aerospace.
BTW add me into the group that has never heard of "Erin" being a male name, (or anything other then Irish).
Add me to the group too! Maybe Erin as a male name is regional because I've never come across a male one, and it would never occur to me in a million years to assume (A) that an Erin a was a male, and (B) that Aaron/Erin are in any way interchangeable (for wont of a better word).
Off topic: I was curious so I did some digging on the name Erin.
It looks like (in the US) Erin's popularity as male name was greatest in the 1970s.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=erin&ms=true&sw=m&exact=trueInterestingly, the name Aaron also shot up in popularity around then.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=aaron&ms=true&sw=m&exact=falseNOTE: The scales on those are not even close to the same
Unfortunately, it is uncommon enough as a male name that it doesn't show up on the name mapper and global popularity lists, although one commenter indicated that Erin for boys was more common in the UK. Incidentally, for females, Erin is most popular in Scotland (#9), Northern Ireland(#13), Wales (#15), England (#27), and Ireland (#35) in that order. Within the US, it is currently most popular in Mississippi at #97, but there seems to be quite a lot of regional variation historically with it being more popular in the North/Northeast in the late 70s/early 80s.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/baby-name/girl/erinhttp://www.babynamewizard.com/name-mapper