What's in a name?

Last Thursday we went back to the Breastfeeding Support Group and they had a Santa there. I took Aubrey over to him and this is how the conversation went:
Santa: "Now who is this?"

Me: "This is Aubrey."

Santa: "Now is Aubrey a boy or a girl."

Me: "Aubrey is a girl".

Now there was much more that I wanted to say such as, "Look at her shirt with the flowers...do you think I would dress a boy like that?" However I was good and didn't say anything rude. This is not the first time that someone has asked if she is a boy or a girl after hearing her name!

In choosing potential names for the baby we were very careful about considering names that were either female or male and not gender neutral. I have had my share of run in's with people thinking I was a male based on my name; some of the highlights - I was assigned a male roommate freshman year of college, recently attended a conference where I was housed in a suite with three men and battled insurance for over a year to get them to cover my yearly healthy woman exam.

We didn't want our little one to have these same issues but looks like we bombed with that. Seems like Aubrey will have the special joy of letting folks know that she is female and not male. That and she will forever be correcting people with the fact that her name is Aubrey and not Audrey (which we get questioned about alot)!

Looks like we'll have to think harder about names the next time around!