The Importance of Choosing Your Child's Name from a Woman Named Shawn

My name is Shawn and I am a forty-four-year-old woman. I did not change my name to Shawn for the sake of having a 'different' moniker. Shawn is not short for Shaunna, or Shawnie, or any other female derivation of the name. And I did not have a sex change. My name is simply ... Shawn.

My mother, it seems, had never heard the name 'Shawn' as anything other than a woman's name. Hmm. Personally, I think that I must have been really rowdy in the womb because there are about a bazillion male Shawns out there and like two other female Shawns - and apparently their mothers hated them too.

You can probably imagine what my childhood was like. Every other 'Shawn' in school was a boy. For many years, boys were the epitome of icky. Then I discovered that boys weren't so bad after all - in fact, they were kind of neat - but I didn't want to have the same name as one!

Then I hit adulthood. My husband's name was John, so if all you saw were our names together - John and Shawn - the logical conclusion was that we were a gay couple. Sigh. My mail comes mostly addressed to Mr. Shawn MacDonald. Telemarketers get really confused when the ask for 'Shawn' and I tell them that they are talking to her. (Okay, so this is a perk to having a male first name. The fact that I enjoy confusing telemarketers is my dirty little secret). And as for the spam that I receive through the internet? Let's just say that if I responded to each and every one of them, my penis would apparently be nine miles long by now. Sadly, I do not have a penis to enhance.

I have had my credit card handed back to me while being sternly scolded by some prepubescent cashier about trying to use someone else's credit card. At my job - I am a waitress - customers are constantly confused about my name. I have one customer that I have been waiting on for three years who still calls me 'Shane', and gets very confused when someone talks about 'Shawn the waitress'. And I have told him, repeatedly, what my name is. Now, I just answer to 'Shane'. What the heck. As long as he doesn't call me late for dinner. Ha!