A girl named Jimmy? This is no Johnny Cash song

LOUISVILLE — Jimmy Shaffer says she was so distressed going through girlhood with a boy's name that she wrote to Ann Landers asking how she could change it.

"Children are cruel," Shaffer said. "There was a lot of teasing."

Sheldon Haden says that for much the same reason, she went by her middle name — Lee, also a boy's name, but one at least some girls shared — from second through fifth grades.

"Whenever I complained," said Haden, whose maiden name was Day, my mom would say, "I could have named you Windy."

Everybody knows about the boy named Sue immortalized in the Johnny Cash song who endures a lifetime of teasing before discovering his father named him that to toughen him up, to ensure he could survive on his own.

But what about girls named Jimmy or Sheldon or Kevin? Are their names a blessing or a curse? Do they make them more resilient, or just more miserable? And why in the name of Dustin and Davie did their parents give them boy's names in the first place?

Girls with boy's names are nothing new. Literary types will remember George Eliot, the pen name of 19th-century author Mary Ann Evans, who used a man's name so her work would be taken more seriously.

Non-literary types, like your reporter, are more likely to think of Daryl Hannah, Cameron Diaz and Louisville's own Sean Young, the steamy star of 1980s hits "Blade Runner," "Wall Street" and "No Way Out."

But what about everyday women with masculine monikers?

Shaffer, who lives in Georgetown, Ky., and runs the state Judicial Conduct Commission, said she was one of five sisters, all of whom, except her, got normal names. "Dad never got the boy he hoped for," she said, "so he named me Jimmy."

She said it made for a difficult childhood, but it made her stronger.

"You can either accept the teasing, or fight back," she said. "I do believe it formed who I am."

As for Ann Landers, she told young Jimmy that she'd have to wait until she was an adult to change her name, but that she might like it by then. And Shaffer says she was right.

"It's a conversation starter," she said. "Operators ask me about it on the phone. And nobody forgets me. I'm the woman with the guy's name."

What's in a name?

Plenty, researchers say.

In a paper titled "Why Barbie Says Math is Hard," Northwestern University professor David Figlio found that girls with masculine names like Morgan and Taylor were more likely to pursue advance studies in science and math than their siblings with more feminine names like Emma or Elizabeth.

Conversely, he reported in "Boys Named Sue," boys with names commonly given to girls were 17% more likely to be suspended from school and especially likely to act out if they shared the name of a girl in their class.

"Parents should give their children whatever name they want," he said in an email, "but they need to recognize that names have consequences."

Haden, 40, a Louisville attorney, said her mother named her "Sheldon" because she watched The Dick Van Dyke Show when she was pregnant and liked its executive producer, Sheldon Leonard, who also starred as the sneering, humorless barkeep who tosses Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey into the snow in It's a Wonderful Life.

Haden says that on her first day of kindergarten, after her teacher insisted on calling her "Shelly," her mom marched into school and said, " 'I named her Sheldon, and she is going to be called Sheldon.' "

After her brief interlude as "Lee," she says, her mom put her foot down when she started middle school and told her, "You are going back to Sheldon." And who was Sheldon to talk back?

"My mom's name is Sunny Day," she said. "I'm not making that up."

Now, she considers her name more of a talking point than a bother, although history seems to be repeating itself: She named one of her two daughters Samantha — and she has decided to call herself "Sam."

Women with men's names say it has prompted a variety of hijinks.

Kevin Nuss, a former marketing executive for Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Department of Travel and Tourism, who once dated a man named Kevin, says she was invited to pledge several fraternities in college. Another Kevin — Kevin Baker, a former clerk and writer for The Courier-Journal, said she was assigned to boys' shop classes, boys' gym classes and rejected by her own pediatrician.

"I must be in the wrong room," she recalls him saying when he came in to examine her. "This says, 'Kevin.'"

Shaffer says she got invited to apply to the Coast Guard Academy, when it was all men. Haden says she was recruited for the Army as a boy and a girl. And Mikell (pronounced "Michael") Grafton said she received a notice from the draft board.

"I sent it back marked 'n.a.,' " Grafton said, "and never heard from them again."

Barren County Judge-Executive Davie Greer says that when she went to Louisville as a child for a YMCA convention, officials insisted that she room with the boys.

"I had to prove to them I wasn't one," she said.

And several said that their male-sounding names have created awkward moments for their husbands.

"When I say my name is Jimmy and I am married to an Eric, it creates a little confusion," Shaffer said.

Grafton, who was given her mother's maiden name, said her boyish name didn't bother her until "I hit my embarrassing years — 13 to 17."

"We do our kids a disservice by trying to be innovative," she said, "and I repeated the mistake." She named her son Michael Addison and said he has taken to calling himself by his middle name, to avoid being teased for being named after his mother.

But Dustin Meek, a Louisville lawyer who was given her father's middle name, said she likes it even though she gets a lot of mail addressed to "Mr. Meek."

"It makes life more interesting and less predictable," she said, recalling the depositions where she surprised opposing counsel who expected they would be doing battle against a man.

"I enjoy it," she said. "I am proud of my father and I am proud of my name."