I will go with the "hardcoded" approach as suggested by Jeffrey for now.  40 or 50 columns should work fine, but will investigate the dynamic option for ultimate flexibility at...

That is great Steve!  Gives me exactly what I'm looking for.  Thanks!

One more question though: I limited the maximum number of names per Department/Gender combi to 3 in the example. ...

Thanks for the input Scott.  I'm not hung up on using PIVOT, so if there is another way, I'd be happy to hear.  What I'm basically looking for is a...

In the "raw data" they can be in any order, but in the final result they have to be in alphabetical order.

Forgot to add:

While the total number of records in the table can go up to 50.000, the result from a single query usually is between 100 and 1000 records.

John,

I agree with you, and it feels most logic as it is the "classic" approach.  However, in this case I am more often than not dealing with clients where the...