How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Let me confess a weakness--I like boys with girl names. This is a hard thing as a writer, because boy characters with girl names are not popular in YA. They are confusing at best, readers say, or imply things about the character that you don't want to imply.* So despite the fact that I know actual non-gay boys named Shannon and Kelly and Lesley and Yancy, it is going to be hard to include non-gay boys with those names in my stories. The thing that annoys me about this is that girls with boy names are NO PROBLEM, especially if the girl is supposed to be awesome and kickass. Think about it--how many "Sams" and "Alexs" have you seen in books lately? I even saw a "Mike" (short for Michaella) once. And this prejudice carries over into non-girl names as well. Recently, I had to change a main character's name from Julian (which is TOTALLY a boy's name, Twinsburg!) to Jeremy because the readers were getting confused by his gender.** The problem, fo