What's In A Name?

This is a plea to all mothers to stop stealing boy's names for their baby girls. Anyone who knows me personally has heard this rant before, but it makes me feel better, so here goes. If you don't know me and just happened across this site by accident, you are probably thinking Lindsay Rants has a female author. NO! I have man gear that I was born with (don't make me prove it). My ancestry is part Scottish and my father had actually lived there for 2 years as a young man where he became good friends with a guy named Lindsay, who I am named after. In Scotland, Lindsay is a very common, very manly name. In America, the name was fine and masculine until that damned Bionic Woman (Lindsey freakin'-Wagner) came along. The Bionic Woman aired the same year I was born (1975) and thousands of mothers started naming their babies Lindsay, usually with some basterized, cutsey spelling. My wifes laughs at me because I still fume whenever her stupid dial-a-bed comercials come on the TV.

I've never met a female Lindsay older than myself and I've only met a handful of male Lindsays (all older than me). Despite being a Republican, Lindsey Graham (Rep-S.C.) helps my cause a bit. I actually know a guy who is so embarrassed of his name Lindsay that he goes by his middle name...get this, Ashleigh. Which starts the long list of names abducted by girls: Sidney, Leslie, Marion, the list goes on and on. Once a name is feminized then those of us men who already have it get sissy jokes hurled at us our whole lives. Actually, Marion Butts and Leslie O'Neal probably didn't get too much crap...or, maybe it made them the hard-hitting NFL stars they turned out to be. The unfair part is that is doesn't work in reverse. If it did I would have named my first boy Stephanie out of spite. The truth is, being teased as a child made me swear I would never give my children androgynous names....'bout that..somehow my two boys ended up Justice and Tristan, which are both considered unisex names-whoops.

I used to have I crush on a girl named Tyler-what if we had ended up together? It just wouldn't work on paper. I've also met girls named Ryan and Devon-where does it stop? Please mothers, there is an endless list of beautiful girl names out there, so stop pilfering from the boy list. If you want to be original, go with something nutcase like Talulabelle or Apple.