Not the Fran

My sister and her husband both have siblings called Fran. This creates a "my Fran" and "your Fran" situation but recently his Fran said he doesn't like being Fran and prefers Francis. My brother-in-law's best friend is also called Francis but goes by Frank. My siblings were named on a Bob Dylan theme. But not me. The firstborn, my dad said that after watching that my mum could have named me anything she liked. There was no deep and meaningful, she saw the name of an economics correspondent in the paper and liked it. Voila. It is actually French. Free woman. It's usefully androgynous in spoken form and often written. In theory the female is with an e, the male with an i. This was not always the case, certainly up to the Victorians there could be a male Frances at least, I'm not sure on the vice versa. In conversation with other France/ises they all report it mostly being spelled the opposite of theirs, which feels accurate. Also a surprising amount of people ask if it's short for…