Taking this discussion westward across the Atlantic:

Some years ago, some friends here in Indianapolis, Phil and Jean ("JEEN", not "Zhan") Smith had occasion to move to Quebec for work reasons.

When the family produced a girls baby, they named it for the mother, Jean.

"No," they were told by the Francophone officials, "you can't name a girl 'Jean'. That's a man's name. It must be 'Jeanne', or choose some other name."

Dave Oesterreich