“I Share A Last Name With a Female Urination Device”
They’re spelled differently, but pronounced the same: “Shewee.”
By Jessie Schiewe
Art: Elizabeth Zamets
When you’re named after a product, mix-ups happen.
I remember one time it happened while I was on a sailboat in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. As we neared Alcatraz Island, I heard someone say: “Oh, you’ve got to get a Shewee.”
I turned around. The guy was behind me, having a conversation with others on the boat. I didn’t know him, yet he was clearly talking about me. He’d just said my last name! The question was: which “Schiewe” was he talking about? Me or my sister? Maybe my cousin Emma in Manhattan Beach? Or perhaps even my 65-year-old dad?
The next time a mix-up like this happened was when I was camping. I heard a woman a few tents away lament that they “should have brought a Shewee.” Again, I was confused. I wanted to go up and say, “Ah, but you have one right here!” But I controlled myself.
You see, my last name is “Schiewe.” Of German origin, it’s technically pronounced “shee-veh,” but here in the U.S., we say “shee-wee.” Nobody has ever correctly guessed how to pronounce it on the first try — which makes sense.
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It’s not a common surname here in the States, and the only other Schiewes I’ve encountered (other than my immediate family members) have been through the internet. They were about as shocked as I was to learn there were others out there who shared the same wonky, vowel-heavy last name.
But here’s the thing: There aren’t just people named “Schiewe” in the world. There are also products with this name. They’re called “Shewees” and they help women pee standing up.
I have Burning Man to thank for first alerting me to the fact that I shared a name with a female urination device. A close friend was preparing for her first “Burn,” doing extensive research into what she should pack and bring with her to the Playa. One of the recommended items was a “Shewee.”
She called me to share the news, prefacing it with “Don’t be upset, but…”
I wasn’t upset. In fact, I thought it was hilarious, if not brilliant. I, like plenty of others without a penis, have had many messy roadside or mid-hike pees that have inevitably resulted in urine trickling down my legs or splashing upon my feet.
A flexible plastic funnel that allows women to pee both cleanly and while standing up (as opposed to squatting) is just the kind of wonky yet convenient thing I could get behind (literally and figuratively).
Maybe if I had been younger and still in school I would have felt differently. Yes, some kids substituted my last name for “seaweed” a few times in my youth, but getting bullied for being named after a pee device would have been much worse.
The Shewee, as the name hints, is a British product made by combining the words “she” and “wee.” Made from a recyclable plastic called polyolefin, each Shewee device comes with its own carrying case and an extension pipe for “when [you’re] wearing bulky clothing.”
Since the funnel-shaped devices first hit the market in 2003, the company has expanded its product line to include two Shewee sizes (the original “Extreme” shape and the larger, more flexible “Flexi), as well as “Peebols” (granules that can transform liquids into solids).
Shewees are also apparently in high-demand. Their website enthusiastically proclaims that “A Shewee is sold every 3 minutes worldwide!” While that’s great news for their company, that factoid reads a lot differently to someone named Schiewe. Swap the two names and you’d end up with a statistic that has vastly different connotations.
Am I flattered to be named after such an in-demand, useful object? Yes. I’ve since started using Sheewees myself and I thoroughly enjoy the ease and lack of embarrassment that comes with being able to pee standing up. (You don’t even have to take your pants off!) I even keep one in my car just in case nature calls when I’m in the middle of nowhere.
But there’s another interesting element at play here as well. It’s called nominative determinism and it’s the theory that people tend to gravitate towards professions that fit their names. Because, as it turns out, the founder of the Shewee could very well have used her own last name for the device. That’s right. Her name is Samantha Fountain.
Fountain invented the Shewee in 1999 during her last year in college where she was studying product design. For her final project — the focus of which was to “study an area that needed improving” — she chose women’s public toilets.
“I tried clever toilets that would be cleaned after each use, I tried female urinals but to no avail, and then I had the idea to make a woman wee like a man,” she told OK Whatever via email. “It’s quick and clean because you don’t need to touch the door, the lock, the toilet seat, etc. To wee like a man, a woman needed a funnel, so I perfected many funnels and came up with the shape it is today.”
I know what you’re thinking. With a name like Fountain and a product that literally makes your pee emerge from your body like a fountain, why didn’t she just call it after her last name? Well, she tried.
“Yes, I thought about calling it ‘Lady Fountain,’ ” she explained, “but there is a fountain pen called that.”
So instead, after a particularly fruitful “brainstorm,” Fountain came up with the next-best name for her device, unknowingly appropriating one of the least common German last names in the world. (Apparently around one in 2,856,580 people have it.)
In fact, before I reached out to her, Fountain had never met another Schiewe.
“I don’t know any others,” she said. “But there is a plant called a Shewee, I think, in a non-English speaking country.”
Perhaps oddest of all is that now, after nearly two decades of peddling female urination devices, Fountain, in a way, has become a Schiewe herself — if only an honorary one.
“I am often called or introduced as Mrs. Shewee,” she said. “I’m proud to be called ‘Shewee.’ ”
I know exactly how she feels.
JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN UNICORNS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.
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