By Kerry Soper
What’s the deal with Utah parents giving their kids weird names? First, you have the moms who’ve made an art form out of mash-ups and alternative spellings: Braxton, Camdryn, Brittlynn, Tynslee, and Awstyn. I’m sure this tradition helps to support Utah’s scrapbooking industrial complex (and spices up the postings of our famous Tik Tok moms), but can we have a brief moment of silence for all of the kindergarten teachers out there who have to memorize the spellings of a new batch of Mackynzlies and Braeysuns each Fall?
Second, you get the well-meaning Utah dads and moms who saddle their kid with the psychological baggage of being named after a legendary scripture hero—the Ammons, Nephis, Sariahs, and Josephs of the state. May I suggest that large families also mix in a few Lamans, Lemuels or Gadiantons—just as a fun, longterm social experiment?
Finally, you have parents (like mine) who gave their child a gender ambiguous name like Taylor, Kennedy, Alex, Avery or Jordan. Why do they do this? Maybe they’re recycling a cherished family surname (the gender of the kid be darned), or they’re trying to appear open minded and progressive (as my mom claims)? Whatever the motivation, it often results, as I can attest, in a childhood of low-grade hazing and an adulthood of awkward misunderstandings.
Most of the confusion I’ve experienced over the years with my gender ambiguous name (Kerry) has been fairly benign and often happens in correspondence (like when I first got hired at my university and received a series of persistent invitations from the Womens Studies program, wondering why I wasn’t getting more involved). Occasionally, however, a mix-up occurs in a public setting where the potential for embarrassment is high. Here’s one of those moments:
In 2002, a few years after I started my career, I noticed a poster on campus for a 5K road race—the annual Thanksgiving “Turkey Trot.” I had been a runner in high school (not a good one), but I thought I might as well sign up when I noticed that the top three finishers in each division won a frozen turkey. We felt a bit poor at the time, and I thought to myself, “I’ll bet I could win one of those; I mean, how many decent male faculty runners could there possibly be on campus?” I based this naïve assumption on a superficial impression of older colleagues in my own department who looked like they hadn’t exercised in decades.
I became so overly confident, in fact, that I made an offhand boast to my wife and three small kids at dinner that night: “Hey, I’m probly’ gonna win a turkey in a race next week.” This excited my children who were at that age where they still foolishly idolized their dad. They begged my wife to let them come to the race and she reluctantly agreed, eyes rolling. I assured her with some defensiveness that the turkey was in the bag.
On the day of the race, though, I started to feel a bit anxious—probably because of how I’d inflated my kids’ expectations. When we got to the event, I kept hovering near the sign-in sheets, and for a long time it looked like there were only three male faculty members signed up: me and two older, slightly awkward-looking guys. Yes! I could have a terrible race and still win a turkey.
Minutes before the race started, however, disaster struck: an additional three or four male faculty showed up… I knew I was in trouble when one of them was wearing a Boston Marathon t-shirt and another was doing a weird stretch where somehow one of his legs was behind his head.
Sure enough, when the race started, I took off way too fast and my nerves quickly got to me; at about the half mile mark, I hit a wall, slowed down to a painful trudge, and everyone started passing me. At one point, I was being passed by brisk walkers in everyday clothes.
Meanwhile, my poor kids had misunderstood and thought I was going to be the first-place winner of the entire race. You can imagine their disappoint when runner after runner crossed the finish line and none of them were me. They kept asking, “Is that Daddy?? Is that Daddy??” After my wife said “No…” for the fiftieth time, they got bored and went off to play in the grass.
When I finally finished, I got last place in my division—seventh out of seven male faculty. Embarrassed, I went directly to the locker rooms, avoiding my kids and the dumb, turkey-themed award ceremony.
My wife hung around to watch, however, and this is what happened: all of the winners were announced, one by one, but there was still one turkey left over. The officials, who were all students, put their heads together and came up with a plan: A female student took the microphone and announced loudly over the PA system, “Hey everyone, we have one more winner! We thought there were only two female faculty members in the race, but it looks like a third one accidentally signed up under the wrong division. And she got THIRD PLACE! Kerry Soper? Kerry Soper? Is she still here!?”
There was a slight lull as people craned their necks. My wife stood there frozen, looking straight ahead for a moment, and then stepped forward in her street clothes and accepted the turkey without explanation.
A few minutes later my kids wandered over and saw what she was holding. Amazed, they peppered her with questions: “What’s that mom?? Why do you have a turkey??” Not wanting to make a big scene, she mumbled under her breath, “Uh… your dad won a turkey; they think he’s a female.”
At this point, I was emerging from the gym. My kids spotted me through the gradually dispersing crowds and began running toward me, screaming at the top of their lungs, “Daddy, you won!! You won a turkey! They think you have a WOMAN’S NAME!” I froze in my tracks for a moment, trying to process what I was hearing; when it made terrible sense, I quickly stepped behind a tree and pretended I didn’t know those weird kids.
Later that evening, when I asked my wife why she accepted the prize, she said, “Hey, you said you were going to win a turkey; I wasn’t about to ruin your dream.” It took about six months before we cooked that stupid bird. I eventually got tired of hearing my nine-year-old daughter giving tours of the downstairs deep freezer, sharing the story in detail with neighborhood kids like Stephlynn, Brytnee, and Brigham. We ate the turkey unceremoniously on a random Sunday; it tasted bitter, like defeat.
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