National Andrea Day

A name that crosses gender lines. While Andrew remained the dominant male form across most of Europe, the variant Andrea took a different path in Italy, where it stayed exclusively masculine. The Renaissance produced several of the name's most notable bearers in its Italian male form:Andrea Palladio, whose architectural treatise shaped buildings from English country estates to the U.S. Capitol, and Andrea Mantegna, whose fresco cycles defined early Renaissance painting.In the English-speaking world, however, Andrea gradually shifted to feminine use, likely influenced by its "a" ending. By the mid-twentieth century, the name was almost exclusively given to girls in the United States, United Kingdom, and other Anglophone countries