In your opinion, does the word "maven" imply female expertise? Or do you think of it as gender neutral? Thanks for your response.

Nothing here…still nothing, actually it seems a little more masculine but eh not much really…

1st I ever heard of it. Defined as maven = A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert.

Neither masculine nor feminine…or both.

Edit: Maven sounds gender-neutral to me – perhaps leaning towards the masculine.

I was trying to imagine a situation where I only caught the tail-end of a conversation, say outside an office, where one speaker says to the other “What a maven!” and not knowing the gender of the person being complimented, I would still invariably think he is male. I don’t know why.

Yup…typo…duh

I do realize the formal definition is gender neutral. Just wondered if popular thinking had it pegged in the feminine realm.

ma·ven also ma·vin

Either way is fine, but neither way suggests femme to me.

I’ve never associated ‘maven’ with either gender.

I associate maven with female knowledge. I am not sure why I do so and it probably has no real basis beyond my life experiences.

it sounds like a bird.. it doesn’t sound like part of company’s name at all
If I had to pick, I’d say it’s more dumpy feminine

Sounds female to me. I think we only used it for females in retail? Shoe Maven is a common term in the biz.

I associate the word with guru, a masculine connotation.

I’ve never heard the word before. If I saw it in a business name I’d probably assume it was a person’s surname.

Sounds like a male only retreat like a haven for guys to hang out & talk bullshit.Oh but that’s called a pub.Forget it then.

I do not in any way connote something female to the term maven.

To me it means you know some Grandmother Yiddish. Interesting that some people here never heard the word. I would assume that the business has at least one Jew (of any gender) as manager.

@gailcalled lol. That’s why in retail we use Shoe Maven. All those Jews in the “garment” industry.

And in the diamond industry. When I was growing up, buying retail was considered a sin. The eleventh commandment was “Thou shalt find a friend of a friends in the (...) business and get the family discount.”

Great and useful responses. Thanks much

@gailcalled Down in these parts its called the kinfolk discount. Someone said that to my husband a couple of years ago about buying a lawn mower/tractor (yes we are Jewish and have a tractor lawn mower) and I had to translate for him.

@JLeslie : Is there a wholesale diamond district in Memphis? Many Hasidem running around?

Hmmm. Not that I know of. There are a lot of orthodox, a lot, its true. But I did not know they were Hasidic. They are in a different part of town, although I did work for a woman for a few months who was observant. But, I rarely shop in that area, and I haven’t needed any new diamonds LOL, I should be so lucky. I live out by the Christians. When I come across another Jew out here we both look at each other with surprise.

Maven very often has a feminine connotation, even though it “shouldn’t” and even though it is technically neutral. Maven is 1600 times more likely to be a girl’s name than a boy’s (per web name site) and that is not an accident: many, many people subjectively feel “maven” to be feminine. Yes, Maven comes from yiddish mavin, meaning “he knows”; and is basically a synonym for “expert” which is neutral. And perhaps promoting stereotypes, Maven can be fine as a neutral descriptor for expert in regard to arts, aesthetics and more educated professions. But Maven often connotes a female expert, and so be prepared to confuse or jar your audience (of course some prefer this!) if you insist on using it indiscriminately; for example “a football maven” would not bring to mind a male sports fan/expert, but a female who knows her stuff about the game. “Guru” is perhaps the opposite of Maven, in that it is more common to use of men, but is technically neutral and can be used of either.

The only times in my life I have heard the word maven used have always been in conjunction with predominantly female-dominated areas of expertise: fashion maven, society maven. So, I have always associated the meaning with the feminine, simply because I’ve never heard it in any other context.