just interested in hearing peoples stories for how y’all have chosen your new names! doesn’t have to be particularly profound or interesting really, i just like hearing about others experiences.
i’m actually planning on changing my own soon socially despite being cis, and just really like hearing how others came to find their names, as well as am curious about if anyone had to go through more than one to find what’s right for them. i figured this would be the best community to talk about the topic even if i’m not trans :)
I looked up “plant names for people”
Username checks out
Trans guy here. There was no masc version of my deadname, and my parents didn’t have a name picked out for if I’d been AMAB, so those routes were closed to me. I initially tried to pick something where I could keep my initials, but the only names I liked were already “in use” in my social and family circles, and it didn’t feel right.
So I looked at the popularity of my deadname in my birth year, then started from that same rank on the boy name charts for the same year and worked my way out. I found a name of very similar popularity that I really liked, and met my other self-imposed criteria (nickname I liked, no nicknames that I hated, not easily misspelled or confused with a femme name). The benefit of looking at birth year popularity ranks is that I ended up with a name that doesn’t sound “too old” or “too young” for me, which may or may not matter to other people.
My parents did something similar when they named us, so that we’d have names that were recognizable, but we wouldn’t share our name with five other kids in our class. (My mom had a very popular name for her age group and she hated it.)
For my middle name I picked a name I always loved but that I didn’t want for my first name, for practical reasons (easily misspelled, gender neutral, much more popular for younger kids than for my age group). In my area, nobody ever knows your middle name unless you go out of your way to tell them, so I let myself have more fun with it.
It’s been close to a decade and I still love both of them. I “tried it on” with friends for a few months before starting legal paperwork, and I’m glad I did. Some other names I tried out didn’t stick.
that’s so nice you still love them, i’m happy for you! a lot of people have special stories or meanings behind why they chose their names, so it’s nice to see someone else who, similarly to me, just had name lists to go through :) and getting to have something you’d already loved for awhile as your middle name is so sweet, i love that middle names get to be unpractical and just fun since they don’t really matter very much.
I chose my name when I was 12. I don’t remember exactly, but I hit on the name Audrey and I was like, “I really like that name”. Even back then in the year 2000, I knew I was trans, and so I decided to take the name for time being. It kinda stuck after years and years of being my true name. Unfortunately, I did not come out to anyone for over 20 years, so the only one who knew my name was Audrey was, well, me.
It’s a gender-neutral variation of my birth name. I’m a simple person.
its funny, I go by pixel which I didn’t pick with the intent of it becoming my name but when you’re in gaming spaces for long enough your tag kinda becomes your name, as it were? Like I still use my “real” name in my day-to-day but just about everyone just calls me pixel outside of my family or very very long-time friends, and it’s “weird” enough that it kinda reads as an enby name in the first place lol
I like how the name naturally got attached to you over the years.
Haha me too. it’s funny, I decided to switch to this tag on my 15th birthday which is also coincidentally when I got involved in the gaming spaces I spent the most time in, and also when I kinda started really questioning my gender more aggressively, so going by Pixel let me fit in more and also let me sort of avoid the conversation about gender, because it wasn’t a name, but the more time passed the more it was absolutely a name lmao
pixel is so cool! that’s really interesting that it morphed into what you use in everyday life- do you have irl friends in your gaming group? i’m just curious how it’d break out of an online space like that’s
I have a couple, but not a ton tbh. Most of the long-time friends i was talking about are from school and stuff aren’t friends from online and those are separate groups for the most part, but they dont really bat an eye at it when those groups do overlap for whatever reason. But the friends that I’ve met online I do hang out with in real life frequently and they call me pixel in person, not really a huge issue haha
I stole mine from a videogame way back in highschool, 15 years before I would officially crack.
I played an RPG where the main character just resonated with me greatly. And might have also been the first female lead I’d ever played as. I held into that name as my future daughter’s name, even though I didn’t want kids. So it was an imaginary daughter.
When I came out as trans, I figured that I was that imaginary daughter I had been building in my mind all those years.
i love this
I wanted a science-based name because I’m a little nerd lol. I considered Kelvin at some point. In the end, (and I really can’t remember why I specifically chose it) I named myself after Edmond Halley – Hal as a nickname, as a reference to HAL 9000 of course.
Honestly, I sort of regret it, because Halley isn’t as gender neutral as I thought and everyone considers it a girl name. I wish I’d been more out there and straight up decided to call myself Truck or Brick or something.
If you want to be called Truck, then dammit, people will call you Truck.
Also, Brick is a fine name.
aww :( that’s really too bad, i’m sorry to hear it. even with hal? i can see halley being a bit feminine, but hal reads as neutral or masc to me more.
for what it’s worth, i think halley is cool as fuck, and the origins of why you chose it are super sick.
Wow, thank you! <3 Hal is a masculine name (and I pretty much go by it all the time) but if I say my name is Halley, people just tend to assume I’m a girl. I really thought it was a gender neutral name… I’m autistic so I can’t tell as easily as other people lol. I guess my advice is: when you’ve picked your name, ask other people whether it reads as fem or masc! I know you’re cis but it can still be really annoying for people to assume you’re a gender you’re not because of your name.
To be fair, whether a name is considered fem/masc/gn is so arbitary, the same name can be fem to one person and masc to another, even in the same country. So I doubt that non-autistic people have an easier time with it, they’ll probably just assume their own opinion is the prevalent one lol.
i can go first, though again i’m not trans to be clear hahaha
for context: i’ve honestly never really liked my name, and have gone by a shortened nickname for a few years now with most of my friends. i can actually remember thinking about how i didn’t like it very much when i was probably as young as 7ish, but going by my nickname has helped me feel better about it overall in recent years.
earlier this year though, probably around january, it really just dawned on me that i don’t feel particularly connected to either my nickname or my legal name. like, even though the nick is better, it’s still just a way to try and get distance from my full name, and i realized it was a possibility for me to just pick another name altogether if i wanted to. so i started searching.
i didn’t have anything particularly in mind, and i tend to be a bit analytical with things like these, so i came up with some criteria (starting letter, syllables, nickname-able, etc), looked up baby name lists, and got to work. after looking, asking for opinions from friends, and sitting on it for a couple months, one of my friends made a suggestion for one that really “fit” me, and i’ve been pretty attached to it since- max/maxine. it’s cool, a bit masculine, has a more elegant and feminine full version, and is just generally a good fit i think.
i’ve been going by it online for a few months now and think i really like it, and would like to start going by it when i start at a new college in the fall, but am just nervous about still about if it’s really right for me or not. i’m sure it’ll be fine, but just a thought that’s been sitting in my mind awhile, making me a little anxious.
My parents were supportive, so I wanted to include them since in a way I would be taking away that moment that they named their child. I asked my mom for the list of baby girl names she’d had for me and picked my favourite from them. That way she still had chosen my true name and I also got to choose one that fit me very well.
i really like this :) choosing a name for yourself is a really powerful experience, taking control over the word that is you, but if you’re close to your parents, it’s also really unfortunate that you’re taking that away from them in a sense. i’m close with my mom, and she loooooves the name she chose for me- it has a really special story and meaning behind it to her, so it kind of breaks her heart to know that i don’t love it too.
Oh great question! I always say everyone should consider whether they might like to change their name - i hear so often people saying they can’t or don’t have a reason, and you don’t need one!
I took my grandmother’s first name cos she’s real special to me, and took my second from my favourite comic book character at the time 😅 but they sound great together!
Agnes the incredible Hulk Smith
Judith Deadpool Smith
That actually sounds more badass than intended.Both of these would be absolutely glorious Mary Sue names, and I am tempted to write the fanfics for them.
thanks :) i’m a namenerd at heart and have been missing my r-ddit community about the topic, so thought i’d bring some of the conversation here! i love origin stories anyway lol
taking your grandmothers name is so sweet 🥺🥺 it’s like naming a kid after someone important to you, but so much more special because it’s your name. and combining it with a favourite comic character is awesome, i love this origin story :)
Well, I knew from a story my mum told me ages ago my dad wanted us all to have biblical names, which is weird because he wasn’t religious in the traditional sense at all. He must have just liked the idea? And sure enough my assigned-at-birth name as well as my sisters names were from the bible. I wrote a list of female names from the bible that I could remember as a way of honouring my dad’s memory and one just popped out at me.
I had already picked my mums maiden name as my last name because I was changing that too, because my original last name had a glottal thing in it that always annoyed me and sort of tripped me up? And when I put them together it was so obviously … me.
Speaking to other trans and non-binary people that seems to happen a fair amount, but don’t worry if it doesn’t. Names grow on you especially with use. As it happens I got married, changed my last name and added a middle name, and I prefer this version a lot more so who knows.
Also don’t feel like you have to tie yourself down to your family. My mum turned out to be an utter shit so I was delighted to be free of that surname choice anyway, and my dad had passed away years before I came out as trans and, while he had a kind heart, who knows how he would have reacted to the news? Don’t be afraid to forge your own path. Don’t feel like you have to associate your new name - first name or surname - with your assigned-at-birth names, even if your current relationship with your family is good.
That’s good to hear, since I’ve been having some second thoughts about my first name.
i appreciate this <3
for your bottom paragraph, that’s really sweet of you to say. i definitely do hear that a lot of people might hear the name in a song or discover it in a video game or something and just feel… drawn to it in a special way. and not having that experience does make me a bit nervous that what i’ve got chosen atm isn’t really going to work out, but i think that even just having something good enough is far better than my legal name lol, and it’s true that it’ll surely grow on me with time.
and hey, if it doesn’t, i can just start looking again :) it’s not too big of a deal
Everybody gather round for a real horror story: I chose mine because of Harry Potter before JKR came out as a transphobe. I already felt the books had problematic elements back when I chose my names (and the writing isn’t like AMAZING or anything), but the fandom made a LOT of things better and wrote a lot of wonderful stuff that reclaimed a bunch of things about her world (sure it was all AUs but still). It was so fun to let my mind run wild in the fandom sandbox - I felt really free.
I had already come out with my names and had been using them for years by the time JKR went all extra with the TERF bullshit. I get depressed thinking about this to this day. Lol.
okay, that’s actually TRAGIC to hear :( but i’m glad that you can still think back about it positively in some regard, with how the fandom allowed you to open up your mind and just be able to play around with that world and its characters. that sounds sweet as least :)
I didn’t really sit down and choose a name, it was given to me. Some friends started calling me by a shorter version of my deadname and I really liked the vibe of it, so I started going by it.
I ended up taking the boring route: I went with the name that my parents would have named me if I’d been AMAB. My deadname didn’t have a masculine version, and there were no other names starting with the same letter I liked, but then I remembered when I was about 11 I’d asked my parents what they would have called me if I was born a boy. So I tried out that name, and found that it just seemed to fit. It’s not too common, I don’t know anybody else in my personal life with the same name, but it’s common enough that people know how to spell it, and it fits my age.
I didn’t like the middle name that my parents chose, though. It made my whole name a bit of a mouthful, especially as I had a longer surname at the time as well. Since middle names aren’t something that get used often, I went a bit more exotic with it, and picked the closest real-world version of my favourite OC’s name.
My spouse and I changed both of our surnames at the same time, as I had taken his surname when we married, but neither of us had a strong emotional attachment to it. So we selected a new one. We’re both descended from a white minority group that has its own ancestral language, so we formed our new surname to fit in with the cultural naming style of that language. As a result, our surname is unique, yet doesn’t look out of place in a phonebook.
what it easy to change your surname to a new one ?
In the UK, it’s really easy, as both first names and surnames can be changed with a deed poll. This is basically a document that details your new and old name, signed by two people that aren’t related to you that you have known for at least two years. We don’t really have defined “legal names” here, so the deed poll is accepted by most organisations to change your records (PayPal were weirdly annoying about it, even after I’d changed my driving licence and passport with zero fuss.)
PayPal still has my deadname, tbh. I just didn’t care enough to send them all the documentation they wanted, given that it would have been enough to allow anyone on their staff to steal my identity if they wanted.
PayPal are a nightmare for changing names, they really are. They’re the only organisation I had any trouble with. What I did in the end was close my old account and open a new one under the same email address, which then required just my new driving licence as proof of ID, like any other new customer. Oh, and I got an apology from customer services for that being the only solution.
Oof. An apology is nice, but a user-friendly experience would be better. I signed up long ago that I didn’t have to give a driver’s license, but did have to give a checking account, and when I changed my name, they said they would change it on my account if I sent a driver’s license, and I think my legal name change paperwork. Which was doable, but I care more about having some semblance of privacy than I do about having my payment information be accurate. I don’t want anyone to have that much information about me unless I am getting something extremely valuable in exchange. I just think of it as having some random woman paying for my eBay purchases. It’s sort of disturbing to think about how long ago all of that was, lol.
What’s “OC”?
“Original character”. Basically, it’s a character you create, not one from a book/TV series/film/game/whatever.
picking your middle name based off an important oc is so awesome, and funny because i have a similar experience. only after using max/maxine for little while did i make the connection that my favourite oc is named maxwell 🙈 which was kind of awkward but also really funny to me! guess it just really shows what my favourite names trend toward ;)
I kind of figure that a person’s favourite OC is one that resonates with them for some reason, and that feels like a really valid reason to use their name as inspiration for a middle name.
Immigrant to the U.S.
I got my English name picked out of a hat when I took a summer English class in 1st grade by the teacher who assigned everyone English names. I decided to go with it since I thought it was a chill enough name after I moved to the U.S. a few years later.
