So, this thread lives again! Seems I neglected to mention, back in 2003, that my mother's name was Marion and that she and my father named my brother Leigh... which may not sound so strange to our UK 'Catters but is quite unusual here in the US.

As for the original issue of the business-email greeting, at the time I had thought it too "chummy" -- too informal-sounding -- to address the unknown party by her first name only, at least in my first email to her. Not knowing whether to say "Dear Mr. Lastname" or "Dear Ms. Lastname", I used the person's full name even though it sounded overly rigid to do so. These days the rules about formality in business-email greetings seem to have relaxed somewhat... perhaps for the very reasons we've seen illustrated in this thread: that what may be assumed to be a male's or a female's name in one country may not be so in another country (or even within the same country!).