trans and nonbinary people (and cis if you apply!), how did you pick your name?
trans and nonbinary people (and cis if you apply!), how did you pick your name?
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 :)
It's a gender-neutral variation of my birth name. I'm a simple person.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Cis, just didn’t like my birth name because I don’t like the sound of it. Weirdly enough I’m fine hearing it said if you aren’t speaking to or about me. If you’re talking to or about someone else named [my birth name] it doesn’t bother me to hear the name at all.
Found my new name by going through baby name websites and writing down every name for girls that I liked. (I prefer to be very gender-conforming in my outward presentation and want my name to be so as well.) It was a very long list. Over time, I culled names from the list and ended up with two final choices. I forget how I decided between them, but what I can say is that during the entire process, I picked names based on how they sounded to me. After all, my grievance with my birth name is how it irritates me to hear it. I did not look up the meanings behind the names. They can be interesting, but my birth name had a perfectly fine meaning and that did nothing to endear me to it.
My deadname started with an "m" so I just started going by "em", which was also one of the gender neutral pronouns floating around at the time, and it just kinda stuck. Using it makes me feel agender euphoria :)
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.
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.
I really liked Korra from the Legend of Korra (ATLA sequel.) She resonated with me, and her struggles and growth throughout the show was very meaningful to me because of my struggles with my trans identity.
I also looked over baby name lists when I was waffling on if I wanted to fully decide on Korra, and there I discovered the alternative spelling Cora. The heart/maiden meaning was more appealing to me, so I went with that. It really just felt right once I got over the initial weirdness of being called something that wasn’t my deadname.
Funny thing, before changing my name, I never met any other Cora’s. Now I’ve met quite a few in the rather short time period. I also love that you are picking a name that is more representative of your identity :)
As someone whose egg cracked very recently I am still unsure if Maya will be my final decision.
It's tough for me. The female Versions of my deadname were ones ingot bullied with my entire teen years so they have this very negative memory to them.
First I went in a direction of names I just find nice and pretty I guess. Starting with Sofia which didn't really fit my vibe, then Florence which is a really nice name but a bit too extra for me. Shortened it to Flora but that felt odd.
For two months now my gf and some friends have been calling me Maya. How did I find it? I reminded of the 3D program Maya. I remembered it's also a name. I liked the sound of it and it felt like it fit my vibe and so far that has been the case
The story of how I got my name was both interesting and mundane.
I played a videogame named Stardew Valley and created a female character there. I don't really think about it much when choosing her name, I just wanted a plant-related feminine name so I chose Jasmine.
Many weeks later, my egg cracked and I randomly chose Jasmine as my new name. Later that day, I realized that the name was the same as my Stardew character.
My first name (Gabriela) is just the feminine version of my deadname. I usually prefer the shortened version (Gaby) though.
My second name (Azucena) it was actually from a soap opera my mom was watching. I couldn't care less about the show itself, but that girl was exactly the hair style and overall look I wanted to have(and to an extent, still do). But I'm leaving it as a second name because unfortunately in Puerto Rico it's a pretty rare name (and apparently the people I've asked don't like it much?).
One of my first real big moments I can remember when I started to realize I was trans was when I was young and my parents told me what my name would have been if I was AFAB. When I heard the name I got this giddy feeling and I was like, "woah, I really like the sound of that name"
So, I decided to take it when I fully came out to myself and the world
I picked all three of my names, the first was by looking at common names from the year I was born, I just browsed baby name books until I found one that I liked. The second is the name of one of my favorite book characters. The third is a derivation of words out of a conlang that means something special to me and sounds vaguely "foreign" to anyone else.
I was working through a list of nature-related names, looking for an uncommon one that still sounded like a real name. I was almost ready to try out "Ember", but then I saw "Hazel" and it just clicked. So that's what I've called myself ever since!
Cis-white-gay here, adopted. Changed my name at 25 to completely dissociate myself from my adoptive "family". Went with a slightly modified version of the name on my original birth records (which I found amidst a bunch of other paperwork that really solidified my decision to leave in the first place -- that is a whole other story). I am who I was born to be, not raised to be.
Someone in my high school had the name and I really liked it. So I used it after we all graduated so it wouldn't be weird. I actually had picked a different name at first just because I didn't want to come off weird or creepy before we would never see each other again. It is a pretty uncommon name.
I reused my online handle into a more traditional name, and gave myself a middle name so people nickname me my online handle without prompting lol.
I didnt know where to look and didnt have any ideas, so I pulled up the list of most popular girls names from my year of birth. It was number 400 something of 500 lol.
I was 12, I legit don't remember how I even picked it. I tried another name for a couple weeks and thought it was too cringe (easily associated with a famous person), so I switched to my current name.
I'm non-binary. My first and last names are fine. First name leans gendered but is technically unisex. I'm in the process of changing my middle name from a generic gendered one to either "Moxie" or "Miles". This is because
- I don't want to have to change my initials (smh)
- I feel no affinity towards my middle name
- Miles is best Sonic the Hedgehog character
- Moxie is best soda
- My middle name appears on few documents but my initial appears on many, so fewer things to update.
(Feel free to suggest other less gendered middle names that start with "M" or try to persuade me one way or another)
I am cis, but my given name was very aged for my generation and grandmotherly which made me self-conscious as a kid.
When I decided to ditch my name, first I tried using my middle name, but that starts with a different letter and it turns out my brain tunes that out entirely if someone that I wasn't already listening to calls it out. I had to already be engaged in conversation with someone to respond to it, which doesn't work great if someone across the room calls out your name to try to show you something cool. My parents never did the full name scolding so I literally almost never have heard my middle name spoken aloud. My dad even thought I had my deceased sister's middle name the last time I can remember middle names coming up in discussion.
I gave up on the name change for a couple of years, but in high school I decided to give something else a shot. I started using my first initial, but spelled phonetically, for example: K spelled as Kay or L as Elle. That was the solution I needed. If someone shouts it from across the room, my brain alerts just like with my full first name. It's simple, but it works. I've stuck with it for 23 years now.
I highly recommend picking something that has a starting sound similar to your current name so your subconscious brain will still pick up on it, otherwise your friends and family will be shouting your new name over and over to get your attention while you are completely oblivious. My kid is trans and I am going through this now from the opposite end of calling the new name out repeatedly with no response because he also picked a name with no similarity to his given name.
I used to play a ton of online RPGs with a strong focus on actually roleplaying and I pretended I was a girl named Alia. So I'm kind of surprised I never considered that name when I actually came out. In my 20s I started hanging out with an older transwoman who was kind of like my mentor, and she named me Shauna. I ended up back in the closet for about 15 years, but when my egg cracked again a couple of years ago I floated a few options to my partner which the same first initial as my deadname, and she didn't like any of them except Shauna, and to be honest I also liked Shauna the best.
Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the video game series Thief, where curse words are often replaced with the word taffer. I chose it as my username, but then it stuck as my actual name when I later came out. Most people just assume I'm related to the guy from Bar Rescue and not that I'm a big fan of a stealth game from the 90s
I had a little Lalafell boy in FFXIV named Cocozan Cozan.
When I switched to femroe I changed the last name, truncated the first to Coco.
People knew me as Coco and she/her online and it felt right. Decided to keep the name for myself.
Just thought about different names and the one I later chose somehow just felt good
I wanted my first name to be something easy for my family to adjust to, and chose my middle name because it spoke to me. Now I've learned my middle name is a family name, and my family and all my friends call me by my middle name, so my first name is relegated to official business only. It is a convenient way to identify scams very quickly :)
I really wanted a name that starts with the letter 'M' because it just felt right. I then looked up "nonbinary/genderneutral names that start with the letter M" I found one with a slight association with my deadname
They're all derivative names. My first/middle names are gender-neutral, though I use the original spelling (which implies masc).
I won't go into detail since it's generally not a good idea to share full names on the internet with strangers, but when I was a kid I looked up my birthname, and the meaning of my first name was "the (opposing) version of [Name]" (eg "Francine is the feminine of Frank").
The irony of the original name was that its meaning was 'very gender' (eg: if Frank were to mean "buff and hairy"), so it was confusing if the opposing version's meaning changed in any way. I took a shine to it when I was a kid, then I used the original name and its most common spelling as my new first name as an adult.
I had a character in a story I wrote but never published that I've gone back to several times, originally named Sol for some in-universe reasons but I eventually changed it for other reasons. (Sorry for being vague, it wasn't a great story.) I still liked the name Sol, though, and eventually decided that I wanted to adopt it. I ended up going with Soleil (pronounced So-lay) because I like how it sounds.
I read it in a bad sci fi book when I was about 14, and it just stuck in my head until I finally came out. Also I like trees and gin.
I mostly just had some rules for names I wanted to avoid: names of people I knew personally, names that sound weird/unusual in english or swedish (where I'm from).
I considered a bunch of names via the usual methods like baby name lists and random name generators but didn't find one that felt right for me, until one day one just occured to me
I've always had a list of names I liked for several purposes but when I heard the name I chose for myself, I became completely obsessed with it and was sad it wasn't my name. But then I realized there was no reason it couldn't be XD
I've read it somewhere and it stuck a chord in me. I started to recognize it everywhere and it just slowly dawned on me that it's my name is guess 😅
My original name has no male counterpart, so I nerded to forge something anew.
I made a large list of names of my language whose letter started with A (same letter as my old name), didn't have a female counterpart and I liked the pronounciation. Then I risked off the names that only very old people used, which were 75% of the list. The remaining list was about eight names. "Abel" was the most common of them.
I noticed afterwards that my parents (if they weren't transphobic cucks) would have liked this name. When I asked them how they picked my name, they said that they wanted it to start with A, be simple to write, short, with no variant spellings, beautiful, with a good meaning and not too common. Also, they're christians.