What’s in a name, anyway? Christmas and alter-egos, apparently.

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”

— Bill Shakespeare

I took Early British Literature in my first year, first semester of university, close to 20-years ago, thus, I feel qualified to explain to you what this quote means in Shakespearean language. Juliet (of The Romeo and Juliet – maybe you’ve heard of them) was expressing her grief over her family's last name, Montague (also hard to spell, and pronounce – ironic - you’ll understand in a moment). In proclaiming this, she was making the point that a person's name is not important, but rather their intrinsic qualities are what matter most. If we wanted to take it a step further (I always do), Shakespeare was referring to the idea that names are a convention used to distinguish people or things… but they don't really have any meaning or worth. 

My name is Shannon Noël Knelsen. At first glance, it may seem like an ordinary name. Zero meaning. Zero worth. There are too many N’s in my opinion, and the diaeresis (two dots above the ‘e’ in Noël) will be explored in detail momentarily. For now, please, let me take you on a super quick 7-10 minute blog reading rainbow journey to break everything about MY name down for you.

It’s really the intrinsic qualities that I’d like for you to focus on, if you wouldn’t mind.

The name “Shannon,” by definition, is a gender-neutral name. I did my research and confirmed that it is in fact a combination of the Irish name Sionainn, meaning “possessor of wisdom,” and the phrase sean-amhan, meaning “old” or “old river.” Together, they form the intriguing meaning of “wise river.” Fun fact: the River Shannon is the longest river in the British Isles, which adds a little touch of... “je ne sais quoi.”

Wise old river? I’ll take it. It certainly feels as though I have lived many lives before this one (if you believe in that kind of thing). Not to get too de-lu-lu on you, but I do think that wisdom comes along with the lessons we’ve carried with us from past lives, too.

Am I blowing your mind yet?

I was born in the 1980’s, and the year that I was born, two of the most popular baby-girl names that my mom was choosing between were Shannon and… gulp, Roxanne. (Cue: The Police - Roooxxxaaaanne… you don’t have to put on the red light!) Listen, Roxanne is a perfectly fine name, okay?… but can we just agree that the name Shannon is much better suited for me? More importantly, that I am most definitely a Shanner-Bananner, and not a Foxy-Roxy.

As for the middle name… yes, that’s Noël as in Christmas—en français. Please keep in mind that bio-mom was only 14-years old when she got pregnant with me. When I was born on the 4th of July, she referred to it as her “Christmas in July.” And THAT my friends, is how the middle name Noël came to be.

Christmas in July - 1987

At one point in my 20’s, I thought I had lost my birth certificate (good news: I didn’t). Naturally, in order to get a new one I wrote whatever I had to write to the government (as you do) and requested a copy of the OG Birth Certificate on record. When it arrived in the mail several weeks later (I had found my original b.c. at that point), the first thing I noticed on the document were the two dots above the ‘e’ in Noël. They weren’t just dots—they were little bubble circles; a detail that was so strongly indicative of my mother’s age at the time of my birth. She was still a child herself, really. And to think, she had a child before me as well that was put up for adoption.

Moving right along.

A teenager filled out this paperwork. Long before the days of MTV’s - Teen Mom.

A core memory of mine from when I was a little girl, involves a desperate attempt to stay up past my bedtime to watch the 90’s sitcom Seventh Heaven; a show that, admittedly, hasn’t aged well for a couple of reasons, that which we will not be exploring together at this time. It came blaring on the screen at 8PM, and I was utterly devastated that my mom wouldn’t let me stay up to watch this show about this perfect, God loving, Christian family. The second I could hear the enchantingly wholesome signature tune start playing, I aggressively, and dramatically stomped my way up the stairs to my bedroom. In-between the tragic wails, and sobs of desperation, I shouted down to the stairs to her — “I don’t love you anymore, Mommy! I’m changing my last-name, so I don’t have to be your daughter anymore!”

Little girl. Big feelings. Upon reflection later in life, the level of insight I possessed in that moment was extremely curious. I believed that by detaching myself from her as my mother through our last names, that this would hurt her feelings the most. I rationalized this because I didn’t share the same last name as my little brother; same Mom / different Dad’s / I got Mom’s last name / you know the drill.

I’ll admit that my last name has always been an annoyance for me for a lot of reasons. I don’t even say my last name anymore when it needs to come up over the phone. I automatically resort to spelling it first, then pronouncing it, and then acknowledging that yes, “a silent K is really unique spelling.” My entire life (no word of a lie), people have spelled it and/or pronounced it incorrectly. Even my birth announcement had it wrong: “KnelSON” instead of “KnelSEN.” For whatever reason, people really find the idea of a silent K at the beginning of a last name to be the most complex concept to bend their minds around. Despite these horrific last name struggles, it truly does hold a deeply special meaning for me, because it’s the last tie I have remaining to my late grandfather, Peter Knelsen. He was, in many ways, the greatest hero of my life.

It’s SEN, not SON… Thanks.

My grandfather identified as “Mexican” or “Mexican Mennonite.” He was however, a highly unconventional Mennonite man who was divorced, smoked cigarettes, gambled, and drank Tim Hortons coffee for sport. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, he immigrated to Canada around the age of 16. He never learned to read English, and did not graduate high school. Somehow or another, he landed a job with Ford Motor Company; right place, right time, probably. He had a long, successful career, and retired in his early 60’s with a full benefits package… the works. The entire family regularly joked that he had a golden horseshoe up his ass, because he was insanely lucky when he played Bingo, and at the Casino—a trait of which I, unfortunately, did not inherit.

No, this is not a picture of me with the Mexican Drug Lord - El Chapo. Although I will admit, the similarities are uncanny.

When he retired, he took up a very… unconventional side hustle: smuggling illegal tobacco cigarettes across provincial borders for $50,000 cash per job. He told me these stories on Father’s Day in June of 2015, while he was laid up in a hospital on his death bed, dying of lung cancer. We always had a way of understanding each other. Our birthdays were only 2-days apart. He was a really special person.

The coolest cat.

I knew from these private “end of life” conversations that he had been hiding most of his money in empty Folgers coffee tins, and Christmas gift bags around his house. He explained the method to his madness as though he was explaining a masterclass in financial asset diversification. He also believed that it was foolish to keep all your money inside the house because “what if the house burns down?” Naturally, he buried some of it in his back yard. He rapidly declined over a couple of very short days after we got him home to die in his living room. We never did get to discuss the geographical coordinates of his buried treasure. To this day, there is a very high probability that there is cash buried somewhere on that two-acre property. The property was sold a couple of years after his death, so don’t bother asking for the address. As I type these lines, I am thinking to myself “I would bet all the coffee at Tim Hortons that he was an undiagnosed neurodivergent person, too.”

I mean. What can I say? RIP Grandpa Pete xo

Okay, so back to the story. I somehow survived an extremely traumatic first decade, and at the very beginning of my second decade on this planet, I remember talking to my adoptive father (the man I called Dad for most of my life), about wanting to change my last name to his last name. I saw this as a good opportunity to finally separate myself from my mother for good. I still harboured that resentment over the Seventh Heaven episode. Kidding (Not kidding). He was finally given legal protective custody over me and my little brother who shared his last name, so changing my name to his just made the most sense in my mind. I have replayed our conversation over in my mind many times, especially after he died in 2017 after a 4.5 year battle with Lou Gerhigs disease. I will never forget the words of wisdom he so innocently and optimistically shared with me. Isn’t it funny the things we hang on to?

“You are going to marry someone someday who loves you very much. When that happens, you’ll take their last name… and that’s going to be pretty special.”

I guess he didn’t realize that I probably never would get married, and take my Prince Charming’s last name. You know, because after the years of childhood trauma, abuse, neglect, a series of extremely tragic losses, and ultimately abandonment, I have been left seemingly incapable of letting my guard down, and being truly vulnerable with another human being. How could I ever let anyone get close enough to bestow a fancy-new last name upon me!?

For much of my life, I didn’t know many other people with the same first name as me. But today, I actually have a handful of Shannon friends, and we all seem to share a common understanding of: “It’s a Shannon thing.” I can’t explain it to you. It’s just a vibe. Urban Dictionary (yes, I told you I did some research) defines the name Shannon as “a fun-loving person who’s very optimistic and cares more about others than herself. There’s never a boring day when Shannon is around.” You can’t make this shit up… but, I would have to agree.

Okay, okay -- so, you’re probably thinking — if your birth given name is soooOOOoOoOo special -- why has Sharon Neilson been your IG handle since the dawn of time?

I can explain, okay? Way back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth (in 2010), I started to write a blog. It was titled “Sharon Neilson - This is my Shitty F*cking Blog.” It was the most chaotic, and unhinged thing that (at the time) had ever graced the Internet. I’m exaggerating, obviously, but it was… something. Sharon Neilson was, I suppose you could say, my alter-ego? However, it was not completely random because there had been dozens-and-dozens of times over my life when introducing myself to people that they would think I was saying Sharon, not Shannon — this was especially common over the phone. I stopped correcting people at a certain point. I didn’t care what they called me. What’s in a name, after all? You already know my issues with the whole silent “K”nelSEN business. You could say that I simplified everything by combining the most mis-spelled and mis-pronounced versions of my given names. Thus, Sharon Neilson came to be… rather organically, really.

I had been writing the shitty blog for over a year before I started worrying that it would ruin my career if coworkers and/or my employer ever stumbled across it. This is the level of unhinged we’re talking about. I can’t remember exactly what sparked this, but I made a VERY RESPONSIBLE ADULT DECISION to shut the shitty blog down. From that point forward, I never wrote about queefs on the Internet ever again. #IYKYK

If you remember Sharon Neilson from those days… first, hi again… and, second, I’m sorry.

It’s about time I start wrapping this up.

Writing has always been a passion of mine. In this new emerging era of Chat GPT, and AI infiltrating every aspect of our lives, I am clinging to what skills I do have remaining that still feel uniquely human. This is a wild time to be alive. Authenticity through expressed written word is a lost art, IMO. No, I will not be making this into an IG reel. I promise.

My life as Shannon Knelsen has not been easy. I am not saying this for sympathy. You do not need to feel sorry for me. Anyone who knows me well enough to have seen a glimpse into my life would support this “I’ve had a hard life” claim as truth. It honestly feels like I’ve lived ten lifetimes in this one sometimes.

I need to start doing something differently though, because I truly can’t keep existing this way. Enough with the “life lessons” please, Universe. We’re good over here. We’re tapping out on the life-lessons now, KTHX.

So, now maybe you feel you know me a little more intimately. I think it’s safe to say that my “intrinsic qualities” are what will make reading this shitty f*cking blog somewhat intriguing for you. At least that’s my hope. I’m excited to take you along on this journey of creative self-expression again, after such a ridiculously long hiatus.

In all my decades on this earth, I can honestly say that I’ve never truly felt like “myself.” I can’t explain it, but I’ve told many a therapist over the years that I feel like I am an ‘alien’, and like I don’t fit in, or belong anywhere. Maybe this resonates with you, and you feel this way sometimes, too (please, tell me I’m not alone in this). There have been countless life-altering events that have taken place in my life that have led me to want to move to an entirely different continent (planet, even), change my name, and erase every trace of who I’ve ever been from the history books. Clearly, I’ve never acted on this extreme desire, but I do fantasize about disappearing quite often. I’ll sign up to go to Mars on a spaceship with Elon Musk tomorrow… I don’t even care.

6-months old.

It’s almost December, and that means Christmas is right around the corner. When your literal middle name means “Christmas,” you simply MUST capitalize on it.
I’m leaning into this with an open mind, and an open heart. In closing, please allow me to re-introduce myself to “olive you.”

Hi, my name is Shannon Noël Knelsen. Yes, that’s a silent K, and Noël—as in Christmas, en français.

But here… you can call me, Sharon.