Girls Named Jake (In Commercials)

I am part of a small group of people with names that suggest the opposite gender.

Having this name is sometimes a cross to bear.  People ask a lot of questions, sometimes unkindly.  "Did your parents want a boy?"
"Where you born female?"

Sometimes it's good, of course.  People remember me at auditions, or parties, or say cute things like, "My name is boring!"  And that makes me feel better, more feminine, and sort of special.

A few years ago, I felt something else: proprietary about my name!  I ran into a girl I knew in college who has 2 first names that began with the letters J and K.  We ran into each other at Urban Outfitters, and she announced that she now goes by Jake.  She smiled knowingly at me, "Because J-K sounds like Jake!"

For the first time ever, someone calling themselves Jake sort of made me feel jealous.  About my own name.  Weird, I know.  And I know I'm never going to change it.  I'm fully grown and in my 30s, for Christ's sake.  I didn't even take my husband's last name when I got married.  This is my name.

One side benefit of the masculine, hard sound of my first name is that it makes the perfect punchline to a joke about gender.

There are two commercials that immediately come to mind:

It's 3 am and a man is talking furtively on the phone to Jake from State Farm.  The man's wife comes downstairs and asks who he is talking to, and he says, "Jake, from State Farm."  She grabs the phone and asks Jake what he's wearing and Jake replies, "Khakis."  And the wife says to her husband, "Well, she sounds hideous."

A mom and dad are driving their nervous teenage daughter to college and she is reading a piece of paper with her roommate assignment on it, "My roommate's name is Jake?"  Her dad cheerfully replies, "She sounds great."

So, in closing, I am still a tiny bit annoyed that people ask rude questions about my name.  But I'm also just a tiny bit proud that it makes for good humor.