I was trying to find a name that wasn't too far off from my dead name, but still different enough. Janet just clicked with me. "Dammit, Janet!" from Rocky Horror, Interplanet Janet from Schoolhouse Rock, and Janet from The Good Place.
I'm still getting used to it. It still sounds weird when the family uses it. I'm only two weeks out of the closet. This is a strange new world for me. :)
I thought the name I chose was quite different from my deadname but just now I realized 50% of my name is also on my deadname. Guess I'll have to forget that the same way I forgot so many spoilers for series and games (?), or not since they really don't sound similar anyways
Edit: grammar. One day I'll write a comment and not edit it
Edit2: wait I was so flabbergasted by that information I didn't finish reading your comment sorry. I hope you're feeling good with your name. It took me a while to get used to it online and I can only imagine how you feel now using it with people around you. Take it easy and enjoy it :D
I personally just stole mine from media I enjoy. Erica, my chosen first name, is a modernized version of Eirika (from Fire Emblem Sacred Stones) since she was the first character I ever felt gender envy from, even before I knew what that meant.
Arlinn is my new middle name (note that you don’t need to change your middle name if you don’t want to) and is stolen from Magic the Gathering. I used to play werewolves, and her card worked well in my deck. I also just think she’s pretty.
Edit: r/transnames and r/transtryouts are some good places for trying out a new name to see if you like it, or for getting advice/opinions on names.
I think Rhea is a beautiful name too! It was actually on my list of name ideas, but it didn’t feel like it fit me. It’s also a bit of a rare name, and I was worried that an uncommon name like that would make it harder to pass.
This tbh lol. I was thinking through names and NOTHING felt right. Was like okay I'll pick this back up in six months I guess when I feel more femme and secure in being trans. For some reason I happened to think about Revy from Black Lagoon, a character I have literally thought 'i was a cute girl nothin would stop me from cosplaying her!!' for YEARS when I was still telling myself I was an enby and I would never transition. At that point I was like oh maybe I'll do Evie but wasn't sure what like the full version would be, I thought about Eva but turned it down cuz of Eva Braun lmao, also considered Evangeline and Everly, but eventually settle on Evelyn/ Evie and started going by it with some friends.
Getting called Evelyn felt so gender affirming lol and so far I have really liked it. Though I don't hear a ton, I'm sure my mind might change in the future, but I think it actually might be the one even though I insisted otherwise (a running theme in my life lol)
That's how I did it. I grabbed my name from a character in a JRPG that I really connected with. I'm also glad I found a relatively normal name I could connect with. My given name is much more unusual than even most trans names, it's not even traditionally a name. So I'm glad to use something that doesn't raise eyebrows anymore.
My name is “Maude”. Long story short, it kept showing up in my life for decades before I accepted being trans. It’s pretty much extinct where I live which made it memorable. By the time I was questioning it ended up on my shortlist, and when I accepted being trans and made the decision to transition last January I finally googled it, and the meaning fits me too well to be a coincidence.
My name means “strong fighter” or “great battler”, and that’s what I had to be to live this long.
Also I like monosyllabic names for autistic reasons, and I chose that spelling over “Maud” because 5 is a prime number and prime numbers are better; did I mention I’m autistic?
So far i only use it in therapeutic settings and online. I don’t trust or value the opinions of my family, so they won’t learn it until I start to girlmode regularly. But in settings where I’m with people who know I’m trans and know my face the switch was almost instantaneous.
My gender therapist asked to use it when I was about 3 months into HRT. I at my next session I decided they could. Two sessions later I had an intense meltdown after my therapist struck an exceptionally rich vein of childhood trauma and grief for all the time I wasted living as a “man”, and by the end of the session I was drained, feeling defeated, and couldn’t quite climb out of the pit. My therapist said “Maude, it’s okay, I’m here”, and that immediately brought me back; and more or less changed my name in my own mind.
I was drunk and stoned and tripping on shrooms and was thinking of a name and one popped into my head and I liked it so much it made me happy cry and that’s my name now 🙂
There wasn’t really much of an adjustment period for me 🤷🏻♀️
i realized if i picked a C name then my initials would spell CAT, so i made a list of C names that i liked and didn't belong to anyone i knew or anyone's pets lol, and Chloe felt perfect 💖 it didn't take me long to get used to it, maybe a couple months to get used to people using it for me. at this point, no one at work knows my deadname, though there are several people who work for the same company that share my deadname, so it only took a few months to get used to hearing it all the time, and recognizing that it's not me they're referring to. so now i hear my deadname every day and im desensitized lol, unless i *know* the name is being used to refer to me
Around like 13, the name Trinity had always stuck out to me, but I wasn't sure why up until 15, when I had been trying out the genderfluid label. Come October 2023, and I realized I was trans. Trinity was one of a few names I thought about, but it ultimately ended up being my choice. Something about it just resonated within me, like it was meant to be my name.
It's probably not why you chose it, but my main association with the name Trinity is the character in The Matrix, which is a very trans film written and directed by trans women. So that's a cool bonus.
My wife and I went through a laundry list of names and spent each day trying out a new name. I was either going to go by Alicia, kind of have to thank the game Time Crisis 3 for that. Or, my final choice of Lilith. It's kind of funny introducing myself as "Lilith, like the demon."
I picked Lilith, too! I first heard it from Neon Genesis Evangelion and really identified with the character (I swear on my life Lilith is a trans allegory in the story since >! everyone who knows about Lilith thinks she is Adam except for a few people who really know her !<) and heard the demon lore behind the name and really fell in love with it.
Also, I tried a bunch of other names, and they felt wrong. Lilith felt the most correct, but it took a while for me to really feel like it was my name.
I played a video game with a love interest that has a couple voiced names he will call you. I chose one, and I realized I loved being called that.
Kind of silly but hey what can you do.
I looked at names i liked on girls i grew up with and a clear pattern emerged, Lucy, Luna, Luisa. I knew lucy and luny were very classy trans girl names so i wanted to be a little special and picked Lucille so i could still have lucy as a nickname :p
Mine was going to be Emerald. Then the found out I had an... outie... and it was going to be Gareth. I liked neither, and have been playing with the name Carina, like the nebula.
yeaaaah I was supposed to be a girl too and that name is my exact name with ie added. Like that's how much they thought I was gonna be a girl. I actually kind of like the name and haaaaate my current name. It would make the transition way easier I'm sure. I just can't.
I didn’t have a name at all, but I really wanted to to go ahead and make new social media accounts that weren’t connected to my deadname. I realized in the middle of this that I needed a name. I panicked and realized I could just use my first and last initials and it would look like it could be short for at least a couple girls names. I was like 1) I can’t feel like an imposter because they’re my initials, and 2) then I can just let them assume a name and I don’t have to think about.
Eventually, I got used to people calling me by the shortened version and liked it. So I decided that I would just pick one of the names it could be short for and just always go by the short version. Then a friend pointed out an option that it could be short for that I hadn’t considered and I loved it. Now I go by either version.
Hearing the full version did feel a little alien at first, but it got more normal over time!
Honestly Im still really new to this, as it hasnt been long since my egg cracked. But, looking for a name to just start experimenting I just looked and scrolled and came across the name "Brie" and it really just stuck. And the very few people that know about it now, say it suits me well. It honestly just sticked, and felt right. Granted getting used to people calling me it, is new, but I like it.
Felicia always stood out to me from watching spiderman the animated series of all things as a child XD in the back of my mind I said to myself that if I ever do manage to transition, that's the name! so yeah not a very cis-thing for me at 13 lol.
I like the idea of picking my own feminine name but honestly after 53 years it feels weird to even try to call myself by a new name but I guess since I'll never really look the part I'm not really dwelling on a feminine name
So, Mine? It's a Welsh name that is roughly translated to "Hill."
I chose it to remind me of the struggles i faced and to make sure that I never forgot them.
Mine actually comes from remembering when I was a kid and one time my mom told me that if I had been a girl, my name would’ve been Jaimey. My mom was super touched when I told her that story!! (For reference my mom and dad both really wanted a girl…lol) guess things work out
My name, Dalia, has been my video game name since I was 10. Every pokemon character and every rpg I could name myself in. And when I finally started transitioning last year the name stuck to me like glue.
I chose my name by browsing a list of baby names from my birth year, then I made a short list of the ones that stood out to me. Then I introduced myself to myself in the mirror and I dunno it was all just vibes after that.
I wound up settling on Sarah because I like the phonemes, it doesn't have any syllables that are particularly ugly or guttural to my ears (sorry Gretchens) I find the S sound unique and pleasing, and the number of syllables lines up nicely with my last name. I also liked the connection to Sarah Kerigan, the Queen of Blades, from Starcraft. There are a lot of themes of her being a monster (she's this badass half bug human creature type thing) and outcast that I identified with strongly.
Oh and the translation means "princess" which I thought was cute. I like that it's also just like a normal girl name, I like that it goes against the idea that trans women are weirdo freaks on the edge of society.
If you want a cool ass name, definitely don't just Google baby names from 19xx like I did.
I dunno, maybe I'm picky about the phonemes but I just like the way it sounds
I like plants and feel very “earthy” and into “witchy” stuff sorta so I went thru a few and my name felt right. Sometimes I think of or hear a name and “aaahhh I wish I could change” but it’s too entrenched in my daily life . 🙃
Hey! So I was in the EXACT same boat as you not long ago. My given name was Tyler, which I was decently ok with but it did just not quite fit after about 2 years into transition. Also I gave myself a bit of dysphoria after looking it up and finding it's not such a "gender neutral name." Granted it CAN be, but the overwhelming majority is male. It made me think of high-school and literally the 15-20 other Tyler's I went to school with and only 1 of them is female. At the end of the day I kinda knew it wasn't perfect when I started transitioning but I stuck with it because of ease. Now with things being how they are in Florida I made my move to change my name sooner rather then later
I then remembered the absolute euphoria I'd had in grade school whenever my teachers called me Taylor by accident. It's not that different but Taylor definitely skews much more gender neutral and at the end of the day the memories of the euphoria that name gave me won out.
I heard my name through a piece of media first myself. I also ended up liking how lyrical it sounds, and the name itself is an aspiration that I would like to my life to embody. It didn't hurt that the piece of media resonated at least a little bit with me too... so I chose it because it jived with me in so many ways.
I changed my name legally over three years ago, and there are still times that it seems weird that people call me this because I had more than forty years of being legally \[*deadname*\]. Having someone call me gives me a little sparkle of joy because I get to hear my name being applied to me, and it helps me remember of all of the things I listed above.
Hello, my name is Serena. I strive for peace and serenity in my own life, and I'm going through a magical transformation in order to make it happen!
I had thought of a new name like my whole life, and in every election on possibilities was always Elizabeth. But I liked the length of my deadname so I would always put it on the back burner.
And then I watched Hamilton and heard Eliza, and I was like, that's it.
Really, it's just the name I couldn't stop thinking about in the back of my head.
I’m an engineer and a tinkerer, so naturally I treated a full new name as a project.
Chloe I picked because it was feminine, graceful, and straightforward with little room for nicknames. Good for work and public life.
Amelia is my middle name for my friends and family to know me by and make fun little nicknames out of. Some call me Mia, others call me Mimi, I go by Ella too. Anything I collaborate on with others is precious, so my middle name is like carrying around clay or tools to make something unique. I got it from a combination of Captain Amelia and Mia Thermopolis.
My last name “Greensmith” is an occupational name meaning coppersmith, which fits me terrifically because I’m an engineer specializing in materials like metal alloys and also I love technology. It’s my favorite color, and also funnily enough where I land on the 4-section square political spectrum, as an ancom engineer I’m a literal green smith haha.
It’s got elegance, function, meaning, flow, and balance. Plus there’s the initials of my very best 3 friends who helped me realize I was trans all woven throughout it like a secret code, which I didn’t realize until after it all came together.
Commenting on How did you pick a new name and what was your experience like getting used to it?...like others are saying, stole it from media I enjoy and vibe with. Takes a good bit to get used to it, so don’t worry if it feels awkward at first
Heh, I spent countless hours pouring through the social security website looking at their data for baby names throughout the years. I focused on +- 3 years from by birth year, considered my race/ethnicity (after it was pointed out to me that not a lot of white folks had the name I had settled on, then the very first person I met at my new job after socially transitioning was a white woman with the original name I had picked, so I don't recommend obsessing over that particular aspect too much).
I didn't want a name that was super uncommon, but also wanted to stay out of the top 15-20 or so across that time span.
In the end I had a shortlist of a handful of names, also informed by some potentials that my mom had mentioned she would have named me. I picked one from my shortlist that shared the first letter with my existing name and went with a middle name she would have used for me.
I thought I was non binary for a few years before I figured out I’m a woman, I came up with a new masculine name along with a gender neutral name that I mostly used at the time and a feminine name. Once I was certain I was at least transfem, if not a binary trans woman, I just kept the feminine name I chose, I’ve been happy with it since.
I randomly began thinking one day, "if I was nonbinary what would would I pick as a name?" And decided Blue because it's my favorite color and I liked the idea of being part of the Sock Ray Blue joke. Anyway like a month or two later my egg cracked but i still was uncomfortable using that name for anything but eventually it morphed into Sky (I don't quite know how but whatever), realized what kind of trans I was(most obvious thing ever and it took me a year after realizing I was trans somehow), and I have started using it in select social environments. So far, in the places I use it I like it, though I basically only use it online and with my core friend group. But I plan to tell my sister and mom soon... for over half a year...
I wanted something uncommon that started with my first initial. It came down to Deidre and Dana, and I chose the latter since it was a bit more androgynous.
I play online video games. One of my characters names is Illiandinn, that’s pretty long so most people call me Illi. I like that, but it’s not really a normal human name Lilly is super close so it just made sense to me. Also I get some pretty bit nerd points for it lol.
Long ago I asked my Mom what she would have named me if I'd been born AFAB. She told me and I've treasured that name ever since. I've only begun transitioning and only a select few know that name so I'm not yet used to hearing the name yet but I think of myself more and more by that name.
Funny thing is, translated from the Language the name comes from, into English, it means "Country Girl".
I did the Great American Hunch.
There were two givens: first, that I was named by my father unlike my brothers; and second, that he had at least two female relatives if not more that he held dear: his great-aunt Leona and his mother, her middle name Faye.
It rolls off my tongue quite normally.
I haven't yet, but I have a name I use online with friends. I tried using it person with friends, and it didnt feel right.
In person I use an old nickname I've always been comfortable with, for now anyway. Might change that up someday, but its easy and works for now.
I’ve known my true name, Ava, for almost ten years now. I got it from a comic that I fell in love with just as long ago, cuz i related to the main character so much that I made her name my online “pseudonym” up until realizing I was actually trans all along, and so I made that beloved name my own name. Im working to get it legally recognized now :)
Ava gang rise up! I’ve always loved the name Ava, and had pictured giving it to a daughter if I ever had one. When I realized I was trans, I realized I could give it to myself. My deadname is also an A name, so I liked that I could keep my initials. Also I have a twin sister with an A name, so we can keep on twinning ☺️
I've been going by my name since forever lol, to the point that I actually thought it was common to connect with a chosen name more than your given name. My name (Ianes) came from the Latin spelling of Janus, Roman god of duality and transitions.
I think name-wise some common things to go for are baby names around when you were born, your given name but feminized, a loved one's name, a name you connect with through usage in other spaces like games/forums/etc., or names from fantasy/mythology/media in general
Honestly I was trying to fine a name with the same letter as my birth name “Q’Andre” and ended up with Qadera which is almost identical as far as letter composition. That part wasn’t intentional but that name just came to me honestly. Not sure where exactly but I’ve thought about it over the years I even found a note from 3 years ago of a list of names for my fantasy character in a game or something (back in my baby gay gaming days) and I had Qadera in there spelt three different ways🤣🤷🏽♀️ the universe just pushed me to accepting that name after I started transitioning
Spent a lot of time thinking about this, looked at lists of names from the year I was born etc. I thought about trying to maintain my initials at first and made a list of candidate names. On the internet I started off with a joke name, hence my username but then I remembered there was a girl in elementary school whose name sounded a lot like mine and when she was called by the teacher I would always respond so I’m going with that IRL.
I initially tried feminized versions of my deadname, and while they are nice names none of them really felt like me, which is also how I feel about my deadname.
It took weeks of soul searching and brainstorming before randomly while driving and thinking about the show RWBY a name came up: "Emerald". Finally a name that felt right, a name that felt like not only who I am, but who I'm *supposed* to be.
From there, it took a bit more research before I decided on what will be my Middle name: "Niamh". Niamh is an Irish name that means bright (pronounced "Neeve"). It's beautiful, simple, and connects me to my Irish heritage.
It took me a while to get used to it, I still remember introducing myself for the first time with my new name and how awkward it felt. But the more I used it, the more I was certain this is the right name for me. Now I'm at the point where I can't introduce myself as my deadname without dying inside, so progress I guess?
All that said, take your time in choosing your name. It took me a solid 2 months before I was certain, and even more before I became used to it.
I stole my name from media; I chose Maxine (although I prefer Max; Maxine it's more formal) and at first it was a bit weird in the sense of reacting to being called but I remember that it was really amazing and euphoric.
Now it's just my name; my deadname it's only used at work (still closeted) and my parents because reasons...
I used to "pretend" to be a girl online a bunch of times. But the biggest and by far longest i've done was with the Name Sary and because i see it as a part of my female life, i chose that one for me. Seemed pretty natural :)
I had spent most of my life playing online games where I always picked female characters and over time ended up settling on various names starting with Val, so by the time I got around to choosing a "real life" name I was already pretty used to it.
I did choose the most common version in English though instead of any of the more obscure or fantastic versions, mostly to avoid further complications in dealing with people.
Tried many names. Kept a list of the few I likeed: Raina, Violet, Arianna, annd myy current one! Which I chose because unique, like mee! But I still lovee the other names!
I chose Jesse because it’s gender neutral, feminine-sounding, and starts with a J like my deadname does (I didn’t want to throw the WHOLE thing away). It’s also part of the codename for Jesse Quick, who’s part of the Flash Family in DC Comics.
I actually found that I’m MUCH more comfortable using it, I just think it sounds better than my deadname and I feel it’s a better description of me, if that makes sense.
I’m also going by my mother’s maiden name, at least at my school’s newspaper. I feel like my new name plus my mom’s maiden name is just a better fit for me; whenever I said my given name and last name out loud I’d always feel like I was in trouble, but not so much now 😅
I go on Wiktionary a lot (I like to study languages) and one random entry just had the name 'Meadow' in an example sentence. It instantly clicked with me and was perfect. It has no relation to my deadname.
Names are funny like that, I find. They just kind of 'click' like that or they don't. That connection can come in any situation or from anywhere, really, whether it's as innocuous as how I found mine or related to media you enjoy.
It took an adjustment and was kind of strange being called something new for a while, much like familiar feminine terms did like 'mother' (well, I'm a 'mother' to my cats, so...) or 'girlfriend' or 'aunt', but now they feel 'normal' like the old masculine name/terms but in a GOOD way. Where the old terms people used felt 'normal' back then but in a BAD and shitty feeling way.
People want to change your name to a fem version of the pre existing name. For me I went from Ken to “Kendra” and I was like, “WHO THE FUCK CHOSE THAT? Like I want to go by my dead name plus two additional letters to make it easier on yall? HELLLLLL NO”
The more and more I thought about it the more and more I was leaning into something mischievous. So I settled on Lucy. Everyone compares me to the devil anyways so why not pick the ultimate reference. Luci… I even started analyzing other characters name Lucy. All the fictional character named Lucy RIGHT DOWN TO THE GUCKING PRNUTS GANG is in some way, shape, or form an absolute pain in the ass/total bitch. So then I was like “yes, this one”
As is evident from my username here, I've gone by "Earth" for the past decade and a half, to the point anyone who met me online up until I transitioned called me Earth by choice instead of my deadname, despite them knowing it. Potential names is part of the introspection that led me to coming out publicly, since I used it as a way to feel around how I wanted to present; I chose the name "Terra" since it embodied the name "Earth" I had used for so long before, and wasn't all that far off from my deadname.
* **Taking Charge:** Recognizing your needs and taking action to feel more comfortable is empowering.
* **Openness to Change:** Embracing a new name opens a new chapter in your life, and that's exciting!
* **Exploration:** The process of finding a new name can be a fun adventure of self-discovery.
I took my name from an old children’s picture book mystery book series I had loved as a kid. She was the first female characters I remember identifying with—probably because she looked like me and was a little tomboyish and very ADHD coded, lol.
Originally i picked Victoria as a compromise of my first pick (Vivian) but it felt too stuck-up and it didn't jive with me. The problem i was having was that i didn't want to pick a name that was too drastically different from my deadname because i was scared of being myself full-time, so i picked something that had a nickname that was similar to my deadname, but i just didn't like it at all. It never felt like people were speaking to me directly. Once i went with Vivian, it all felt so right that i rolled with it and never looked back. To this day it feels like i was born with the name, as natural as it can be.
I saw the series POSE and fell in love with the actress Angel, the way it sounds, how feminine it is and sweet; however, I am hispanic and Angel is mainly used for men, so I chose the french version of Angel for women which would be Angèlle. It’s pretty, elegant, feminine and I can still go by “angel” as a nickname.
I wanted one connected to my culture. I’m Jewish, and I wanted a Jewish name. Also, there’s a Jewish custom of not naming your kids after people you know well who are still alive (it’s a major insult), so I wanted to follow that when naming myself. Those two criteria were the only ones I had. I ended up picking a name that’s been common both in the Jewish community and in the wider world, but which is often pronounced differently in both. I like both pronunciations, and the fact that there are two different ones is kinda cool.
When I first came out 17 years ago, I chose the name Felicity, because it means happiness. Friends called me FiFi for years, I miss that. Later, when I was 23 or so I decided to change my name to Sinead. It's a feminine form of my deadname, proudly Irish, and most people think of Sinead O'Connor, who's a total badass.
I made a big list, my best friend made a big list, we cross-referenced and had one shared entry, which became my new name. It has personal significance for me as well but it helped to get outside perspective on how I come across to others. I picked my middle name completely on a whim without consulting anyone. Love both names and felt immediately comfortable using them.
I went through a list of names and I saw one and I went like "huh... That one's nice" and I really like it and it feels like me. I think it's partially a gut feeling so allow yourself to just kinda not overthink it
Okay, so. My dead name is quote un-quote unisex. But I've met so many men with the name and have only heard of two women with the name, and one is trans. So people were trying to convince me to keep my deadname because they said it's unisex, which I disagree. And because of that one famous trans girl, right? There is no way in hell. I can't stand my deadname.
For a while, I was using Vivian for my video game characters. So that was immediately what I went for. I love "V" names. I pondered Opal, Marceline, and Celeste. Opal is my favorite stone, and it's now my middle name. When I came out to my mother, it was over text message. I told her my new name, and she was accepting and loving. She liked Vivian, but she suggested Vivilyn. And I immediately fell in love with it. I texted her back, "MOM! how did you know my name!?!?!"
Vivilyn has the same sound at the end of it as my deadname. It has helped me with recognizing and answering to my new name. As a bonus, I feel like Vivilyn totally fits my personality. The only downside is, sometimes, if I dont hear it quite right when people mumble, it will straight up sound like my deadname. I actually go by Vivi more often than anything else to avoid that, but I do love hearing my whole name pronounced.
I can't guarantee you will have that, "Holy shit, that's my name!!!" moment. But if you like old names, I might suggest a few
Vera
Evelyn
Ellie
Victoria
If you resonate with my name, feel free to adopt it 🫶
For my eventual legal one, I just kinda changed as little as possible, because effort.
I then decided to have as many names as I want (Most people already have 2 cause of screen names vs legal names), so I ask people to call me different things depending on how close we are.
I've got 6.
For me I picked Chloe as a new first name for two reasons. 1 I didn’t want anything close to my deadname and 2 I always loved the name Chloe so it just fit.
Grace was chosen as a middle name to remind myself to give others Grace as well as my self in life.
I have only changed it in a few places so not heard it or even used it that much yet. But know I love it. It is odd to hear it used in the few places and people that have been told but if someone uses it and I am not expecting it, it does not register yet too me to even really notice.
My new name, Saga, kinda just popped into my head. I think I overheard it in a conversation. I always thought it was a good name since it's scandinavian and I'm scandinavian, it's very unique and most likely I won't run into anyone sharing it, it's short and fast to spell on a keyboard (compared to my deadname) and I liked it because I *thought* it didn't follow any of the trans girl stereotypes with being named after goddesses or fictional characters. Turns out Saga is the norse goddess of stories and the localised name for Amity Blight from the Owl House in my country, so jokes on me xD
As for adjustment period I can't say much since I'm not out yet, and the people I'm out to don't use my name, but god I can't wait. I can't even imagine I'll have to adjust because I'd I happen to hear Saga in a conversation I'll immediately react to it, and I love getting called Saga online already <3
I already really liked names ending in -ia (eg. Olivia, Amelia) and I was watching howls moving castle with some friends. The way they kept saying Sophie sounded nice so I took Sophia and use Sophie as a nickname
I've considered two name Cassandra Jean. A new name I like with my mom's middle name. I have also recently considered Jessica Erin, which is close to my current name.
Soooooo I put a buncha names in a hat that I stole from girls I went to highschool that I liked the sound of when I was 15, I pulled out Jenny first, then I emptied the rest of hats contents into the trash can, and that's my name now. That's the whole story. It took me like all of 10 minutes to figure it out? Most of that time was just tearing up paper and writing down names.
After that I basically just told all my close friends my new name that same afternoon, they started using it immediately for me, and that was that. I just got more and more used to hearing it over time until I finally got to legally change it when I was 22, and then I never had to hear my deadname again in reference to me ever again. That took place 26 yrs ago.
I literally spent more time figuring out what I wanted for lunch today then I did picking out my name.
Before I did the hat thing... I had very briefly considered the feminine version of my Deadname. That's when I immediately realized that was basically exactly what my mom's name was. She basically took the male version of her own name and used it for mine so that idea got dropped in the trashcan immediately. I had to pick something brand new after that point because I knew I wouldn't be okay with keeping the same initial anymore and trying some variation on it, since then I'd just be reminded of my mothers name all the time. Thus... hat to the rescue.
When I stumbled on a name I thought was nice, I'd go into internet chatrooms with that prospective name as my screen name and talk to people just to see how it felt
Well, short version: my mother had Bianca picked out if I was AFAB, and when she adopted my sister she couldn't change her name to use it, so it's available for me to use now. Ankha is just the nickname I picked out from Bianca.
Took the name of a friend I had in Elementary school, shortened it/took the more casual version because I like the idea of having a nickname. Kaitlyn aka Kate :>
to get used to it I'm using it for any low-risk thing where it doesn't actually matter what the name inputted is
sometimes I doubt my name but whenever I go looking for a new one to try out, none of them sound like *my* name as much as Kate does.
My wife helped me make some rules.
Do I want to change first and middle or just first names?
I changed both with my new middle being a gender neutral derivative of my old first name.
Do I want my initials to stay the same or will it bother me if my initials change?
I kept my first name the same letter so first/ last initials remained the same but first/middle/last initials did change.
If keeping initials then that narrows down to “x” letter names only. Narrow down from there.
Then we made a top ten list, weeding out names of people or celebrities I don’t want to be associated with and any names that just sounded odd with my last name.
Practices signatures with each and felt them out to see how I liked signing them.
Ended up going with number 2 in the top ten list bc number 1 annoyed me to write as a signature 😂
I had a really strong feeling that I should name my daughter Alyssa. Then when I realized I was trans and that part of why I wanted a daughter was because I was trans, it made sense to me to call myself the name I was going to give her.
Well, me and all my siblings all have a name that starts with A. So I limited myself down to the A names if I chose to stick to that limit. So, I wrote down every name I could think of that starts with A. Then I looked up some to see if there were any more I liked. This took me weeks, maybe even months. Then I narrowed them down. I went from Austin, to what will hopefully some day be Alice. I like my name Austin, I'm just not sure I I want to change it to a more girly name or not yet. Bt Alice is the name I have chosen if I decide to do so.
I just started looking for names that used my initials to simplify some things. In some ways I regret doing that because seeing my initials is still a reminder and causes some dysphoria, but it's getting better.
I tried a bunch of names, many favourites of mine just didn't fit right, not Gwendolyn, not Guinevere or names with other letters like Anya and Annwyn. Eventually I started trying Gemma. It really fit, it wasn't my favourite name, but it just fit. I was still exploring, but I put it as my preferred name on my hospital profile and promptly forgot I had done so. About 2 weeks later came my next appointment at the gender clinic through the hospital. When the nurse came out to call me from the waiting room she called my name Gemma. I got up immediately and didn't have to think about it at all. I knew it was me and it was like I always had that name.
From then on I've stuck with it. It's only been 8 months of being out publicly, but noone deadnames me by accident and some coworkers and friends have even forgotten my deadname. I'm now in a place where everyone either has pretty much forgotten or has never known my deadname. Only some transphobic family members such as my parents, grandparents and sister deadname me on purpose. Though I've caught my mom slip in her resolve a few times and call me Gemma.
I've got all the forms submitted for my legal name change now and should get the new birth certificate and certificate of name change in the next few months.
I got Charlotte from my best friend (probably boyfriend/husband in another reality)’s mom of course he and I both agreed that in the reality of have been an equally good Erica since despite being a bad bitch he knows I’m hella sweet.
I spent a couple months researching names and meanings. I tried a few out and asked my friends and family what they though along the way before I settled on Grace Serenity. I think I had a few dozen contenders and a few that had no chance that others suggested (my brother suggested Grunhilde). I've been using it for over a year and I can still be surprised when someone calls me it!
My advice is to look at lists of names and find one that has meaning for you. My name kind of encapsulates the feelings of coming to terms with being trans and the second lease on life I got by finally accepting it (with grace and serenity).
So, I originally changed my name to similar to my deadnamed just a feminine version. I thought I was okay with it for a while, but I realized I chose it to make other people's lives easier. And I started getting dysphoria and this is gonna sounqd far fetched but Everytime I would hear it it would give me like flashbacks on a minor scale (PTSD). A lot of my family used it to disrespect me and not in a affirming way, that would shorten it to a nick name so that they didn't have to call me that too, so it just tainted the whole way my name sounded as like I said it was similar just feminine version. I would like hear their voices repeating my dead name back to me and the memories of the abuse would come flying back, it ended up bothering me so bad I just started going by a new name. Which is my middle name, it wasn't hard to adjust and people don't ask questions either, since a lot of people go by their middle name non trans reasons. It resonated with me way better and now I get no dysphoria and my name is just kind of, my name? It doesn't make me squeamish or give me anxiety or being any flashbacks or any uneasyness, it's just, my name. Which is very satisfying, it took a while to get use to a new name again, but once it stuck I haven't looked back
I was originally looking for something more androgynous and had recently watched trinity seven so I chose Arin as she was my favourite character and ended up really liking it and feeling more me when I started using it
I went through a handful of names, and my friends were always very supportive. I only kept it to them at that point, but when I found the name that I knew was mine, I made the effort to request it from others. Nobody was truly bashful or weird about it except my parents at first. One of those stubborn pride things. I specifically asked my siblings to make an effort to use my new name and set an example, and with time everybody followed naturally.
I don't know how, but the name April just came to me. It was one of the first names I ever thought of, and nothing has ever topped it since. It feels like I've been reborn with it, almost like I didn't even choose it.
i came up with the name merphi for myself. i knew the name murphy and thought it was really chte and wanted to call myself that, but it’s more of a masculine name. so i change up the spelling and then boom, fem name.
I am incredibly indecisive and was in the same situation. I just browsed a popular names for girls list and tried to find one that sounded like me. Took a while but trying out the first one now to see if it fits.
Learning to answer to my new name was way easier than unlearning answering to my deadname. I picked my name so long ago I don't even know how I settled on it. I know it had been my default name in video games for a while.
It took me around 2 years to finally decide on a name, whittling down a list bit by bit (it's not Gayle). When i finally got to a name i wanted to try, first my care coordinator and my therapist started calling me it to see how it felt (i cried the first time). Then i told my friend and she started using it. I started to really like it, so i told all the important people in my life, then my job, then changed on facebook.
At first, i didn't correct people when they used my deadname because i was just kinda thinking, "It's ehat they're used to." Which probably made it take a little longer for me to get used to it. Luckily, my friend and a super awesome coworker were much better at aggressively correcting people than me.
Once i had my name legally changed, after about a year, i started getting better at correcting people. I also, at that point, started refusing to respond to people who used my deadname.
Now, there aren't a lot of people left in my life who know my deadname aside from that first friend and my family. I do occasionally still have to correct my mom. She's very supportive, but she and i tend to mess with each other and say insane stuff, so she will occasionally exclaim, "Oh my god, deadname!" Then apologize and correct herself. If she says it and doesn't realize it, my practiced line is, "mom, i love you very much. My name is *Not Gayle*"
My given name had a "C" sound so I wanted to keep something that started with a similar sound so it wouldn't be too hard getting used to answering it. I made a list of all the names that start with a C or K that I could think of and when I wrote down "Kendall" it just felt absolutely perfect to me. I get more compliments from people on my name so it must be a good fit. Additionally, it wasn't terribly hard to get used to, but even now 2 years after I have been using this name, I still get a little jolt of happiness when I hear someone say it 🥰🥰
I only just settled on a name like a week ago.
I've been trying to figure out what my new name should be for as long as I've been questioning, which has been a long damn time.
Early on I decided what I would change my middle name to, as it's the feminine form of my previous middle name that I never really used whatsoever.
Then recently a friend brought up that name as a name for a pet and I was like "oh hey that's my middle name!" (My chosen middle name that is)
and they were like "Can I call you that?"
I later explained that it's not legally my middle name it's just one I chose, somehow I'd never previously considered actually just using it as my first name.
Everybody who I've told about it all seems to really like it and say that it suits me.
Some have even already adjusted to using it on me.
So I feel pretty confident in saying that I've finally found my name :)
Seeing everyone's nice stories about how they got their names makes me feel horrible lmao, I just stole D.Va's from overwatch name and went with my grandmother's name as a second name because it sounded nice 😭😭😭
But it's been pretty warming since I've started using it, I feel like it's going to be lot of paperwork to make it my legal name tho
I've never been really all that creative and had trouble deciding on a name. I ended up asking my ex, my (gf at the time ofc) to help me. We ended up with cleo, which is what I go by now (around people that know). And it was odd getting used to it, especially whereas 99% of people don't know I'm trans so It was hard getting used to the people who did know, calling me by my new name.
Back in 2018, I would join random discord servers and introduce myself with a name I was thinking on and hang around there for a while. On my third or fourth try I eventually settled on the name I still use today
I knew I wanted a first name that started with "A." My last name starts with "M" and I wanted my initials to be AM. Because I'm an incessant Against Me! fan... lol I then chose Avery because my favorite movie is The Color Purple and I always loved Shug Avery's character because what she stood for to Miss Celie. She helped her find her inner beauty, realize her strength, and showed her that someone could love her. And, I wanted to be my own Shug Avery. 🥹🙃
It honestly took awhile to get used to a new name. Maybe like 6 months. And, sometimes my family deadnames me (innocently) and I still reflexively respond to it. Which, sets off all sorts of emotions. I've had my new name for about a year and a few months now.
But after some time, it just feels like me. It gets easier.
I landed on Gem because of something I was reading to help me with a tattoo design. The more I read the more it made sense to me. I'm still getting used to it, but so far everyone I've asked to use it has been amazing, except my mom.
Idk before I knew I was trans I said that if I ever had a girl or suddenly turned into a girl I’d name her Beatrix from the game slime rancher. Idk why I just thought it sounded nice
I have a fondness for the character Rosalina, my Sister's name ends in "-lyn" and I wanted to honor her while having a pretty name from a pretty and inspiring character.
My mom once said that if she had a daughter, her name would be Laura, so when she accepted me i kept it as a gift and because i liked the name, lol
At the beginning, it was strange. When people had my dead name and someone called for them, i instinctively reacted for like 6 months, so I reacted to both names for a while
Lots of people will change the spelling of their current name. Ie: Billy to Billie. Others will make feminine versions of their name. Ie: George to Georgina or Georgette. I didn't want to do that. I decided to have a little fun with it. The name Amanda kinda sounds like *A man. Duh!* So I decided on that name.
My name is Lyla, and I first saw the name on a Spider-Man 2099 trading card in his bio when I was a young kid, like 9-10 I think. It was the first name that came to my mind when I thought what name I’d want be called by as a woman, and it’s been great being able to be out and be called by my chosen name, even if my parents sometimes still forget
Honestly? My current name used to be my username. After a rough breakup (rough only for me, the decoupling itself was smooth) I found my name to be meaningless so I just asked people to call me by my pseudonym until I found a new one. It was neutral enough.
I never found a new name and grew too attatched to the name so I simply just... stepped into it. Took a while to get used to hearing that name spoken, especially in like, a uni lecture and just have it be normal. The hardest part was adjusting to the mundanity once it had settled in for the long haul
I just looked up popular baby names that year, picked a few I liked, tried em out, found the one, found a spelling I liked, and now I can't imagine my name being anything else
I've always liked mythology, and always liked Persephone. Plus shes got sort of a re-birth thing going on which is fitting. But a big issue with my deadname is that is was too long and Persephone was even longer. So I went with Kore, but that was getting read as "corey" which I do not vibe with. So I went with Kora instead, pronounced like the avatar, but not inspired by.
I've always fought with myself over a name, whether it was a username, my actual name, or whether I believed I was trans or not - and this has been the case for at least a decade at this point. Whenever I do find names I like, they're usually from media that I like. Only recently have I found a name that I love and would probably feel comfortable with being called by almost anyone, that being Vivian.
I think Vivian sounds really cool and cute; I took it from a Paper Mario TTYD character. also after searching it up, I found out it's a unisex name which makes it even better in my eyes!
I don’t know why I picked Leah, I didn’t know anyone by that name and it was unique enough. As for getting used to it, it was entirely my best friend. He asked about names then started to use it in private… until he got drunk and said it in a group discord call .-. Everyone knew I was trans already so I didn’t mind.
It took a week short of 4 years after my egg cracked to finally find a name. The first one just didn't feel like a good fit after starting HRT. This one was just talking with a few friends and it randomly came to mind.
Ran it past a long time friend and partway through when I realized I didn't care what he thought about it. That's when I knew.
Still in the trying it on phase so I can't say much about getting used it.
I studied geology so naming myself after the earth was pretty easy. It was either Terra or Gaia and Gaia is waaaaaaay too crunchy for me. So I’m Terra.
when I was like.. 13 I was making a facebook account to act as the person I wanted to be- chose a name for the account and continued from there. FFW to 21, when I realized I'm trans, I had 8 years of getting used to hearing people call be Ruby in normal conversation (thanks twitch lol, otherwise verbally it'd be weird) so no adjustment period. there was an adjustment period detaching my deadname from the response center in my brain though.
Imogen - There aren't a lot of fem names starting with "I" such as my dead name and I learned of it from a minecraft server moderator working for the youtuber "strauberryjam" like 12 years ago.
Legit serious I was named by studio wildcard the makers of ark survival evolved. The game suggested I name one of my characters Ayla and I liked it so much I decided to name my irl character Ayla. As for getting used to it I was already more used to people calling me by my Internet name than my deadname when I got the name change and my Minecraft username is Ayla so the majority of the people using my Internet name were using that so I was used to responding to it. Also I got my name change while I was waiting for a start date at my current job and was unemployed (by choice) so there's only one single person who knows both of my names and she knows better than to get on my bad side which made the name swap easy.
The only real criteria I had was that I wanted to keep my first initial. My first choice was Callie since it’s about as close to a feminine version of my deadname as you can get. But at the time I had a friend named Kali and I thought it would be confusing if we both had the same name so I went with my second choice, Celeste. Most people think I got it from the video game but I actually got it from the Animal Crossing character because she’s always been one of my favorite characters
I made a shit ton of alt accounts on discord and just joined a few servers and played games with people while I tested names out. After a while, I narrowed it down to Avy
Lmfao fun story, I was publicly my chosen name for like, 5 years before I realized I was trans.
It kinda just started a nickname from my online handle at the time and I leaned into it. My ex even only knew me as that name.
I found out like, a month before realizing I was trans that while it was a unisex name, the spelling I used was female only.
Realizing that my true self had been fighting to get out for that long was…..something
My experience is a “bit” of a cautionary tale - I picked a new first name, it was based on a musical of a woman who was saying goodbye to a false identity, but in a really sweet, loving way. The musical was the first time I was brought to tears and convinced that I didn’t need to fight who I truly was.
Additionally, me and my wife had considered changing our last name to something original, as we didn’t have a whole lot of reasons to be excited for either of our maiden names. Cue months and months later when the combination turned out to be a famous trans pornstar.
Now I wouldn’t have minded that so much, but she proudly took up slurs as advertising material, and I was super afraid of my name being associated with those slurs - but still, I loved the first name. Me and the wife discussed it and we had gotten a lot closer with her family throughout the first year of my transition, so we decided we were happier taking her last name.
At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter if someone else lived their life some sort of way, but I do still recommend googling your new name and making sure you aren’t going to regret any unexpected connotations.
As for getting used to it, I also strongly recommend learning whether or not you like nicknames lol. My name is Natalie, and I wish I affirmed that instead of letting everyone call me Nat. I have grown used to it, but the full name definitely gives me that warm fuzzy feeling and I have had trouble getting across to friends that I wouldn’t mind hearing it a bit more lol
As a writer of short stories, I have two PDFs from Google. One is 1000 girl names, the other is 1,000 boy names. I use that a lot for my characters and then sometimes I just get really creative and go off list.
As a way to help with relieving the dysphoria I was feeling, I started writing this one story. It started off as a short story then turned into a small book and now is actually turning into a full-blown book.
The lead character's name I soon realize was me. So I adapted her name which isn't too far off of my dead name. It was actually pretty easy to get used to the new name. However while I was stealth, going back and forth between the dead name and my new girl name was a bit of a challenge. That was back in June of 2018. Since then I've changed it to my legal name.
My suggestion to you for choosing a name is downloading your preferred genders name list, get a big Notepad and go through the list and find all the names that you like and write them down. Then you start eliminating them one by one until you finally, with the name you feel is right for you.
Finding a middle name is the same process. Basically you go through the list a second time, say allowed your first name that you chose and then the middle name and see not only how that sounds but how it feels. The process could last couple hours or it could even last a couple of days.
Always have second and third choices on hand just in case you decide you don't like your first choice.
It's a pretty big responsibility choosing your own name. This is something, when you legally change your name, you'll have to live with for the rest of your life.
I hope this helps you. Feel free to send me a private message if you want to talk further.
So I am a massive geeky dork. I picked my name based on my favourite power ranger. so I fell in love with geki violet from the japanese series juken sentai geki ranger. so when I picked a name I chose violet. Mostly because purple isnt really a name haha. .
the way I got used to it was playing role play games particularly ones set in a modern setting. So we played a alot of call of cthulhu, I wasnt out at the time, so I got the players to use my character name, something they really should be doing anyway, and I trialed a lot of names this way. if a name didnt work I might have oragised a little accident for that character. oh well guess I need a new charatcer now. try a new name.
in saying that i dont actually go by violet anymore and it sounds weird. most people have shortened it to vi which now actually sounds more natural. also I should note I am still pre everything and only now just starting to present as the person inside.
Took a while. I also thought I was ok with my dead name. It was primarily a masculine name but was sometimes used for women so I thought I’d never change it. Of course back then I didn’t think I’d transition either. A friend asked me what I want my new name to be and the concept struck me. For weeks every female name I encountered went through a filter in my mind to determine if it could be mine. Nothing fit.
Then I was talking theology with a coworker who enjoyed engaging on that subject and had a eureka moment. Once I found it, it just clicked like it’d always been my name. Then every time I heard it in the beginning there was this mix of surprise and delight and pride.
That said I know lots of people who took time to grow into their new names. I’ve also known a lot of people who’ve changed their name multiple times. My favorite human swapped through maybe 5 names before finding one that is literally perfect
I picked a name off a website of popular names from the year I was born. I was okay with it, but I had very, very good reasons to change my last name as well. So as I was getting my identification and stuff everywhere updated, I kept seeing my chosen name paired with my previous surname, and that made me sick (CSA in my past from my father). So I grew to hate my chosen name as much as my deadname, essentially.
Meanwhile a username I had on twitch made a streamer give me a nickname, and I liked how she used it, and my other friends in that stream, and at the last minute before my filing I changed the middle name I was going to use to that nickname from the twitch stream.
It's now the name all my friends use for me, and if I had the money and witnesses, I would pay for a second name change, to make this my first name and get one more degree of separation from my abuser's last name.
My name is a meme that happened to have an opposite name. So I picked the opposite as my new name.
Yup, I literally chose my name on a gender based meme.
When I was a kid, my neighbor would go out to lunch all the time with my father and I. He would always talk about his best friend Madeline. I always loved hearing that name and I didn’t know why. Years later at my first job I worked with a Madeline. She was pretty and really nice, but over time I realized I liked her name possibly more than her actual self. 🤭 Then a few years after that with my girlfriend at the time we would talk about names if we had kids and Madeline always was my number one for a daughter. Then finally a few years after that I realized I was trans and why I have always loved the name Madeline so much…because it was my name! My friends think I took inspiration from Celeste, and while I love that game, it wasn’t my inspiration like it was for other girls out there! But it’s another reason why Madeline is a great name for me. 😊
Friends, family, and coworkers have been calling me by this and Maddie, and the butterflies won’t stop! It’s been half a year now. It’s a feeling I never had with my dead name. I think you just know. But you may have to have people call you that. When you hear it out of your head by people you care about and those who also care about you, it all makes sense and you’ll know if it’s you.
I knew I loved my name long before I properly admitted to myself that I was trans. Then I heard it in a TV show and it got me thinking about it more and how much I actually wished it was my name. Then I thought I wanted it to be my daughters name. The whole ordeal of finding my name was one of the things that actually helped me to realize I was trans.
It's hard to say how it felt to get used to my new name. All I can really remember was that after I picked it and had some people using it any time I heard my dead name I would feel sick. So the distain for my old name was too overwhelming to really notice how I felt about my new name.
The hearing my dead name bit is also made worse because it's a noun and a verb so it just comes up in every day speech sometimes.
I developped my name as a i was still an egg but had suspicion i may be trans so i tried to pick a feminine name that fit me. At first because i wanted to keep my initials. So i thought of names like Ariane, Ariana, Alice, Aline but i didn't like the archest of the two former and somehow i found the the i in the second syllable didn't fit me. Also I wanted a name that could be shorten without the first vowel for a nicknam, but Riana, Lissia, Lina all didn't fit me.
Then the name Adèle strike me and for a while i was also considering Adeline, but Delina felt wrong as a nickname. And then, as i'm a linguistics student and autistic (linguistics is one of my main special interests), I discovered in a particular brand of dialects in my home region, a sound change would move the stress from a /i/ to an /a/ and delete the /i/, and I somehow had the idea to apply it to my name Adelína > Delína > Deliná > Delná, as it has become one of my favorite sound change (autism !). And i just felt in love with it, to the point that i'm not even planning now to have "Adeline" or "Adelina" as a full name aha.
At the start i used to use a neutralised version of my deadname when i considered myself NB inbetween and then I came out to my friend group and using she/her and Delna made me so euphoric that it cracked my shell.
However this euphoria would fade with time and I would get confuse as my alexithymia (blindness to understand own's emotion) would bare me from understanding if my feeling of unfamilarity was dysphoria or not (spoiler: it was not) plus the fact that for a while my dead name would not give me dysphoria (this changed, now it totally does). I needed many months before getting used to my chosen name and i'll soon do the papper work to change it officially.
Recently a friend of mine came as FtMasc and somehow i feel exactly the same feeling of unfamilarity when i use his new pronouns and their new name than when people called me my chosen name and pronouns at first so I'm now 100% certain that this feeling back then wasn't dysphoria but in fact just uneasiness to novelty (autism! again xD)
I wanted something that made me feel powerful and badass but was also connected to my life. I’ve always escaped with video games. Named my son after a video game character and wanted to share that with him. I was speedrunning Metroid: Dread at the time and they have killer robots that chase you down and extract your DNA (😘) that are called E.M.M.I. Or Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier.
When I considered that as a name it immediately felt bad ass and powerful and made me feel strong and courageous and ready to tackle transitioning. I was obsessed immediately.
Like my son’s name, I wanted a longer more traditional sounding version of my name, like a reverse nickname, that I could use when I wanted. I didn’t want to be another transwoman named Emily (nothing wrong with that name at all it just didn’t fit me) so I extended it to Emmilyn. I usually go by Emmi though. Em if we are in a situation where I need to stealth. OhEmmiGee for a screen name (OMG).
I carried a notebook around for several months and wrote down any name I liked. I'd read the list daily, and eventually picked the name that stuck out to me
It was a bit of an adjustment, but I've been out for 16 months. I don't answer to my dead name anymore, it's actually a bit of an issue at the hospital, Dr office and dentist.
They have my "preferred" name on file, but they never check
They're usually embarrassed, but they never seem to learn
Like I know for a fact that they put it in () next to my legal name at the cardiologists office instead of the preferred name box, so she even knew people wouldn't check
It didn't work, still used the wrong name. I was just sitting there, no idea I'm getting called up
I was trying to find a name that wasn't too far off from my dead name, but still different enough. Janet just clicked with me. "Dammit, Janet!" from Rocky Horror, Interplanet Janet from Schoolhouse Rock, and Janet from The Good Place. I'm still getting used to it. It still sounds weird when the family uses it. I'm only two weeks out of the closet. This is a strange new world for me. :)
Ha, I was in a Rocky Horror cast for 6 or so years
Woahhh that's actually really fucking cool
That reminds of “perks of being of being a wallflower”
I thought the name I chose was quite different from my deadname but just now I realized 50% of my name is also on my deadname. Guess I'll have to forget that the same way I forgot so many spoilers for series and games (?), or not since they really don't sound similar anyways Edit: grammar. One day I'll write a comment and not edit it Edit2: wait I was so flabbergasted by that information I didn't finish reading your comment sorry. I hope you're feeling good with your name. It took me a while to get used to it online and I can only imagine how you feel now using it with people around you. Take it easy and enjoy it :D
Conversely, I didn't want a name anywhere close to my deadname because I just don't want to be reminded of the person I used to be.
Omg I want to hang out with you and cojure you for cheery information just like Good Place Janet!
I personally just stole mine from media I enjoy. Erica, my chosen first name, is a modernized version of Eirika (from Fire Emblem Sacred Stones) since she was the first character I ever felt gender envy from, even before I knew what that meant. Arlinn is my new middle name (note that you don’t need to change your middle name if you don’t want to) and is stolen from Magic the Gathering. I used to play werewolves, and her card worked well in my deck. I also just think she’s pretty. Edit: r/transnames and r/transtryouts are some good places for trying out a new name to see if you like it, or for getting advice/opinions on names.
Hey that's awesome! I nabbed my name from Rhea in fire emblem three houses, I totally get what you mean, Erika is lovely
I think Rhea is a beautiful name too! It was actually on my list of name ideas, but it didn’t feel like it fit me. It’s also a bit of a rare name, and I was worried that an uncommon name like that would make it harder to pass.
That's very fair! It certainly is on the rarer side, I like the warm feeling it conveys. I do wish you luck on your journey :D
The name "Rhea" always looks like a mountain glacier in my head.
Rhea is v cute!!!!
This tbh lol. I was thinking through names and NOTHING felt right. Was like okay I'll pick this back up in six months I guess when I feel more femme and secure in being trans. For some reason I happened to think about Revy from Black Lagoon, a character I have literally thought 'i was a cute girl nothin would stop me from cosplaying her!!' for YEARS when I was still telling myself I was an enby and I would never transition. At that point I was like oh maybe I'll do Evie but wasn't sure what like the full version would be, I thought about Eva but turned it down cuz of Eva Braun lmao, also considered Evangeline and Everly, but eventually settle on Evelyn/ Evie and started going by it with some friends. Getting called Evelyn felt so gender affirming lol and so far I have really liked it. Though I don't hear a ton, I'm sure my mind might change in the future, but I think it actually might be the one even though I insisted otherwise (a running theme in my life lol)
Camilla is my unrealistic transition goals 😍
That's how I did it. I grabbed my name from a character in a JRPG that I really connected with. I'm also glad I found a relatively normal name I could connect with. My given name is much more unusual than even most trans names, it's not even traditionally a name. So I'm glad to use something that doesn't raise eyebrows anymore.
My name is “Maude”. Long story short, it kept showing up in my life for decades before I accepted being trans. It’s pretty much extinct where I live which made it memorable. By the time I was questioning it ended up on my shortlist, and when I accepted being trans and made the decision to transition last January I finally googled it, and the meaning fits me too well to be a coincidence. My name means “strong fighter” or “great battler”, and that’s what I had to be to live this long. Also I like monosyllabic names for autistic reasons, and I chose that spelling over “Maud” because 5 is a prime number and prime numbers are better; did I mention I’m autistic? So far i only use it in therapeutic settings and online. I don’t trust or value the opinions of my family, so they won’t learn it until I start to girlmode regularly. But in settings where I’m with people who know I’m trans and know my face the switch was almost instantaneous. My gender therapist asked to use it when I was about 3 months into HRT. I at my next session I decided they could. Two sessions later I had an intense meltdown after my therapist struck an exceptionally rich vein of childhood trauma and grief for all the time I wasted living as a “man”, and by the end of the session I was drained, feeling defeated, and couldn’t quite climb out of the pit. My therapist said “Maude, it’s okay, I’m here”, and that immediately brought me back; and more or less changed my name in my own mind.
I was drunk and stoned and tripping on shrooms and was thinking of a name and one popped into my head and I liked it so much it made me happy cry and that’s my name now 🙂 There wasn’t really much of an adjustment period for me 🤷🏻♀️
I was wandering how I was gonna figure this out. I figured the next trip would be an interestingly introspective shitshow. I can't wait.
i realized if i picked a C name then my initials would spell CAT, so i made a list of C names that i liked and didn't belong to anyone i knew or anyone's pets lol, and Chloe felt perfect 💖 it didn't take me long to get used to it, maybe a couple months to get used to people using it for me. at this point, no one at work knows my deadname, though there are several people who work for the same company that share my deadname, so it only took a few months to get used to hearing it all the time, and recognizing that it's not me they're referring to. so now i hear my deadname every day and im desensitized lol, unless i *know* the name is being used to refer to me
Chloe’s a really cute name 🤔 it is my sisters so maybe a little bias 🤭
Chloe's are always such cuties too!! Good choice, Chloe!!
Around like 13, the name Trinity had always stuck out to me, but I wasn't sure why up until 15, when I had been trying out the genderfluid label. Come October 2023, and I realized I was trans. Trinity was one of a few names I thought about, but it ultimately ended up being my choice. Something about it just resonated within me, like it was meant to be my name.
It's probably not why you chose it, but my main association with the name Trinity is the character in The Matrix, which is a very trans film written and directed by trans women. So that's a cool bonus.
This was my first thought as well! I love that character.
I'll be honest, never watched any of them, but now I need to go watch them at some point lol
My wife and I went through a laundry list of names and spent each day trying out a new name. I was either going to go by Alicia, kind of have to thank the game Time Crisis 3 for that. Or, my final choice of Lilith. It's kind of funny introducing myself as "Lilith, like the demon."
I was just talking about that name in that subject area w/ another person ..buuut what a great name!
I picked Lilith, too! I first heard it from Neon Genesis Evangelion and really identified with the character (I swear on my life Lilith is a trans allegory in the story since >! everyone who knows about Lilith thinks she is Adam except for a few people who really know her !<) and heard the demon lore behind the name and really fell in love with it. Also, I tried a bunch of other names, and they felt wrong. Lilith felt the most correct, but it took a while for me to really feel like it was my name.
Okay, I'm actually kind of in love with any girl named Lilith, they are all hotties and just that name hnnngggggg
Not going to lie, I read the "hnnngggggg" is this: https://youtu.be/JCrnRLV5slc?si=nspoUt9me5xp_-or And yes I've very much in my hot girl era.
Lmaooooo depends on how down bad I am that day hahahahhahah
I played a video game with a love interest that has a couple voiced names he will call you. I chose one, and I realized I loved being called that. Kind of silly but hey what can you do.
I looked at names i liked on girls i grew up with and a clear pattern emerged, Lucy, Luna, Luisa. I knew lucy and luny were very classy trans girl names so i wanted to be a little special and picked Lucille so i could still have lucy as a nickname :p
I haven’t committed to a name myself and Luna is a top contender
My mum thought I was going to be a girl at birth and had already picked out Dani (Danielle) so I went with her original name for me
That was my mom's choice too, but she gave it to my sister instead. 🤷♀️
Mine was going to be Emerald. Then the found out I had an... outie... and it was going to be Gareth. I liked neither, and have been playing with the name Carina, like the nebula.
yeaaaah I was supposed to be a girl too and that name is my exact name with ie added. Like that's how much they thought I was gonna be a girl. I actually kind of like the name and haaaaate my current name. It would make the transition way easier I'm sure. I just can't.
I reclaimed what would have been my name at birth
Hard line. One day I should ask my mother, I mean considering she struggled to name my sister & I named her, I have no idea, ha.
I didn’t have a name at all, but I really wanted to to go ahead and make new social media accounts that weren’t connected to my deadname. I realized in the middle of this that I needed a name. I panicked and realized I could just use my first and last initials and it would look like it could be short for at least a couple girls names. I was like 1) I can’t feel like an imposter because they’re my initials, and 2) then I can just let them assume a name and I don’t have to think about. Eventually, I got used to people calling me by the shortened version and liked it. So I decided that I would just pick one of the names it could be short for and just always go by the short version. Then a friend pointed out an option that it could be short for that I hadn’t considered and I loved it. Now I go by either version. Hearing the full version did feel a little alien at first, but it got more normal over time!
Honestly Im still really new to this, as it hasnt been long since my egg cracked. But, looking for a name to just start experimenting I just looked and scrolled and came across the name "Brie" and it really just stuck. And the very few people that know about it now, say it suits me well. It honestly just sticked, and felt right. Granted getting used to people calling me it, is new, but I like it.
I'm glad you like than name. I like that cheese. I hate the person I know who goes by that name (it isn't you.)
Felicia always stood out to me from watching spiderman the animated series of all things as a child XD in the back of my mind I said to myself that if I ever do manage to transition, that's the name! so yeah not a very cis-thing for me at 13 lol.
I like the idea of picking my own feminine name but honestly after 53 years it feels weird to even try to call myself by a new name but I guess since I'll never really look the part I'm not really dwelling on a feminine name
So, Mine? It's a Welsh name that is roughly translated to "Hill." I chose it to remind me of the struggles i faced and to make sure that I never forgot them.
Mine actually comes from remembering when I was a kid and one time my mom told me that if I had been a girl, my name would’ve been Jaimey. My mom was super touched when I told her that story!! (For reference my mom and dad both really wanted a girl…lol) guess things work out
I picked a name similar to the nickname/shortened version of my birthname. but it’s different enough for it to be a new identity
My name, Dalia, has been my video game name since I was 10. Every pokemon character and every rpg I could name myself in. And when I finally started transitioning last year the name stuck to me like glue.
I chose my name by browsing a list of baby names from my birth year, then I made a short list of the ones that stood out to me. Then I introduced myself to myself in the mirror and I dunno it was all just vibes after that. I wound up settling on Sarah because I like the phonemes, it doesn't have any syllables that are particularly ugly or guttural to my ears (sorry Gretchens) I find the S sound unique and pleasing, and the number of syllables lines up nicely with my last name. I also liked the connection to Sarah Kerigan, the Queen of Blades, from Starcraft. There are a lot of themes of her being a monster (she's this badass half bug human creature type thing) and outcast that I identified with strongly. Oh and the translation means "princess" which I thought was cute. I like that it's also just like a normal girl name, I like that it goes against the idea that trans women are weirdo freaks on the edge of society. If you want a cool ass name, definitely don't just Google baby names from 19xx like I did. I dunno, maybe I'm picky about the phonemes but I just like the way it sounds
I'm the same way. The phonemes have to behave in my mouth, and the word has to flow from my tongue like water.
I like plants and feel very “earthy” and into “witchy” stuff sorta so I went thru a few and my name felt right. Sometimes I think of or hear a name and “aaahhh I wish I could change” but it’s too entrenched in my daily life . 🙃
I like Arthurian Mythos, and I kinda just went by different names for years but this one kinda stuck
Hey! So I was in the EXACT same boat as you not long ago. My given name was Tyler, which I was decently ok with but it did just not quite fit after about 2 years into transition. Also I gave myself a bit of dysphoria after looking it up and finding it's not such a "gender neutral name." Granted it CAN be, but the overwhelming majority is male. It made me think of high-school and literally the 15-20 other Tyler's I went to school with and only 1 of them is female. At the end of the day I kinda knew it wasn't perfect when I started transitioning but I stuck with it because of ease. Now with things being how they are in Florida I made my move to change my name sooner rather then later I then remembered the absolute euphoria I'd had in grade school whenever my teachers called me Taylor by accident. It's not that different but Taylor definitely skews much more gender neutral and at the end of the day the memories of the euphoria that name gave me won out.
I heard my name through a piece of media first myself. I also ended up liking how lyrical it sounds, and the name itself is an aspiration that I would like to my life to embody. It didn't hurt that the piece of media resonated at least a little bit with me too... so I chose it because it jived with me in so many ways. I changed my name legally over three years ago, and there are still times that it seems weird that people call me this because I had more than forty years of being legally \[*deadname*\]. Having someone call me gives me a little sparkle of joy because I get to hear my name being applied to me, and it helps me remember of all of the things I listed above. Hello, my name is Serena. I strive for peace and serenity in my own life, and I'm going through a magical transformation in order to make it happen!
I had thought of a new name like my whole life, and in every election on possibilities was always Elizabeth. But I liked the length of my deadname so I would always put it on the back burner. And then I watched Hamilton and heard Eliza, and I was like, that's it. Really, it's just the name I couldn't stop thinking about in the back of my head.
Hmm. First name Tiffany, always loved due to an actress by the same name. Middle name Ramona, blame my favorite character from Scott pilgrim lol.
I’m an engineer and a tinkerer, so naturally I treated a full new name as a project. Chloe I picked because it was feminine, graceful, and straightforward with little room for nicknames. Good for work and public life. Amelia is my middle name for my friends and family to know me by and make fun little nicknames out of. Some call me Mia, others call me Mimi, I go by Ella too. Anything I collaborate on with others is precious, so my middle name is like carrying around clay or tools to make something unique. I got it from a combination of Captain Amelia and Mia Thermopolis. My last name “Greensmith” is an occupational name meaning coppersmith, which fits me terrifically because I’m an engineer specializing in materials like metal alloys and also I love technology. It’s my favorite color, and also funnily enough where I land on the 4-section square political spectrum, as an ancom engineer I’m a literal green smith haha. It’s got elegance, function, meaning, flow, and balance. Plus there’s the initials of my very best 3 friends who helped me realize I was trans all woven throughout it like a secret code, which I didn’t realize until after it all came together.
I read the comic book Saga and then immediately named myself Hazel so thats one good way.
Hazel gang 💕
I chose a name I liked that was popular in my birth year. I got used to it pretty quickly.
Commenting on How did you pick a new name and what was your experience like getting used to it?...like others are saying, stole it from media I enjoy and vibe with. Takes a good bit to get used to it, so don’t worry if it feels awkward at first
Heh, I spent countless hours pouring through the social security website looking at their data for baby names throughout the years. I focused on +- 3 years from by birth year, considered my race/ethnicity (after it was pointed out to me that not a lot of white folks had the name I had settled on, then the very first person I met at my new job after socially transitioning was a white woman with the original name I had picked, so I don't recommend obsessing over that particular aspect too much). I didn't want a name that was super uncommon, but also wanted to stay out of the top 15-20 or so across that time span. In the end I had a shortlist of a handful of names, also informed by some potentials that my mom had mentioned she would have named me. I picked one from my shortlist that shared the first letter with my existing name and went with a middle name she would have used for me.
I thought I was non binary for a few years before I figured out I’m a woman, I came up with a new masculine name along with a gender neutral name that I mostly used at the time and a feminine name. Once I was certain I was at least transfem, if not a binary trans woman, I just kept the feminine name I chose, I’ve been happy with it since.
I randomly began thinking one day, "if I was nonbinary what would would I pick as a name?" And decided Blue because it's my favorite color and I liked the idea of being part of the Sock Ray Blue joke. Anyway like a month or two later my egg cracked but i still was uncomfortable using that name for anything but eventually it morphed into Sky (I don't quite know how but whatever), realized what kind of trans I was(most obvious thing ever and it took me a year after realizing I was trans somehow), and I have started using it in select social environments. So far, in the places I use it I like it, though I basically only use it online and with my core friend group. But I plan to tell my sister and mom soon... for over half a year...
Naomi from Girls Und Panzer. (Mika also from that). I love hearing it, and I got used to it right away.
literally just picked one that sounded cool and ran with it
I picked my original alternative name but my given could be a female name too. So I don’t care.
I wanted something uncommon that started with my first initial. It came down to Deidre and Dana, and I chose the latter since it was a bit more androgynous.
I play online video games. One of my characters names is Illiandinn, that’s pretty long so most people call me Illi. I like that, but it’s not really a normal human name Lilly is super close so it just made sense to me. Also I get some pretty bit nerd points for it lol.
Long ago I asked my Mom what she would have named me if I'd been born AFAB. She told me and I've treasured that name ever since. I've only begun transitioning and only a select few know that name so I'm not yet used to hearing the name yet but I think of myself more and more by that name. Funny thing is, translated from the Language the name comes from, into English, it means "Country Girl".
I did the Great American Hunch. There were two givens: first, that I was named by my father unlike my brothers; and second, that he had at least two female relatives if not more that he held dear: his great-aunt Leona and his mother, her middle name Faye. It rolls off my tongue quite normally.
I haven't yet, but I have a name I use online with friends. I tried using it person with friends, and it didnt feel right. In person I use an old nickname I've always been comfortable with, for now anyway. Might change that up someday, but its easy and works for now.
I’ve known my true name, Ava, for almost ten years now. I got it from a comic that I fell in love with just as long ago, cuz i related to the main character so much that I made her name my online “pseudonym” up until realizing I was actually trans all along, and so I made that beloved name my own name. Im working to get it legally recognized now :)
Ava gang rise up! I’ve always loved the name Ava, and had pictured giving it to a daughter if I ever had one. When I realized I was trans, I realized I could give it to myself. My deadname is also an A name, so I liked that I could keep my initials. Also I have a twin sister with an A name, so we can keep on twinning ☺️
I've been going by my name since forever lol, to the point that I actually thought it was common to connect with a chosen name more than your given name. My name (Ianes) came from the Latin spelling of Janus, Roman god of duality and transitions. I think name-wise some common things to go for are baby names around when you were born, your given name but feminized, a loved one's name, a name you connect with through usage in other spaces like games/forums/etc., or names from fantasy/mythology/media in general
I asked my mom what she would have named me if I had been afab. Luckily, it’s a name I like so I can still say my mom named me. 🤪😁
Honestly I was trying to fine a name with the same letter as my birth name “Q’Andre” and ended up with Qadera which is almost identical as far as letter composition. That part wasn’t intentional but that name just came to me honestly. Not sure where exactly but I’ve thought about it over the years I even found a note from 3 years ago of a list of names for my fantasy character in a game or something (back in my baby gay gaming days) and I had Qadera in there spelt three different ways🤣🤷🏽♀️ the universe just pushed me to accepting that name after I started transitioning
Spent a lot of time thinking about this, looked at lists of names from the year I was born etc. I thought about trying to maintain my initials at first and made a list of candidate names. On the internet I started off with a joke name, hence my username but then I remembered there was a girl in elementary school whose name sounded a lot like mine and when she was called by the teacher I would always respond so I’m going with that IRL.
I'm still trying to pick one I can't decide on any name u like
I initially tried feminized versions of my deadname, and while they are nice names none of them really felt like me, which is also how I feel about my deadname. It took weeks of soul searching and brainstorming before randomly while driving and thinking about the show RWBY a name came up: "Emerald". Finally a name that felt right, a name that felt like not only who I am, but who I'm *supposed* to be. From there, it took a bit more research before I decided on what will be my Middle name: "Niamh". Niamh is an Irish name that means bright (pronounced "Neeve"). It's beautiful, simple, and connects me to my Irish heritage. It took me a while to get used to it, I still remember introducing myself for the first time with my new name and how awkward it felt. But the more I used it, the more I was certain this is the right name for me. Now I'm at the point where I can't introduce myself as my deadname without dying inside, so progress I guess? All that said, take your time in choosing your name. It took me a solid 2 months before I was certain, and even more before I became used to it.
I stole my name from media; I chose Maxine (although I prefer Max; Maxine it's more formal) and at first it was a bit weird in the sense of reacting to being called but I remember that it was really amazing and euphoric. Now it's just my name; my deadname it's only used at work (still closeted) and my parents because reasons...
I used to "pretend" to be a girl online a bunch of times. But the biggest and by far longest i've done was with the Name Sary and because i see it as a part of my female life, i chose that one for me. Seemed pretty natural :)
I had spent most of my life playing online games where I always picked female characters and over time ended up settling on various names starting with Val, so by the time I got around to choosing a "real life" name I was already pretty used to it. I did choose the most common version in English though instead of any of the more obscure or fantastic versions, mostly to avoid further complications in dealing with people.
Tried many names. Kept a list of the few I likeed: Raina, Violet, Arianna, annd myy current one! Which I chose because unique, like mee! But I still lovee the other names!
I chose Jesse because it’s gender neutral, feminine-sounding, and starts with a J like my deadname does (I didn’t want to throw the WHOLE thing away). It’s also part of the codename for Jesse Quick, who’s part of the Flash Family in DC Comics. I actually found that I’m MUCH more comfortable using it, I just think it sounds better than my deadname and I feel it’s a better description of me, if that makes sense. I’m also going by my mother’s maiden name, at least at my school’s newspaper. I feel like my new name plus my mom’s maiden name is just a better fit for me; whenever I said my given name and last name out loud I’d always feel like I was in trouble, but not so much now 😅
I go on Wiktionary a lot (I like to study languages) and one random entry just had the name 'Meadow' in an example sentence. It instantly clicked with me and was perfect. It has no relation to my deadname. Names are funny like that, I find. They just kind of 'click' like that or they don't. That connection can come in any situation or from anywhere, really, whether it's as innocuous as how I found mine or related to media you enjoy. It took an adjustment and was kind of strange being called something new for a while, much like familiar feminine terms did like 'mother' (well, I'm a 'mother' to my cats, so...) or 'girlfriend' or 'aunt', but now they feel 'normal' like the old masculine name/terms but in a GOOD way. Where the old terms people used felt 'normal' back then but in a BAD and shitty feeling way.
People want to change your name to a fem version of the pre existing name. For me I went from Ken to “Kendra” and I was like, “WHO THE FUCK CHOSE THAT? Like I want to go by my dead name plus two additional letters to make it easier on yall? HELLLLLL NO” The more and more I thought about it the more and more I was leaning into something mischievous. So I settled on Lucy. Everyone compares me to the devil anyways so why not pick the ultimate reference. Luci… I even started analyzing other characters name Lucy. All the fictional character named Lucy RIGHT DOWN TO THE GUCKING PRNUTS GANG is in some way, shape, or form an absolute pain in the ass/total bitch. So then I was like “yes, this one”
My name is Lilith. I yoinked it from a post here. It was very easy to get used to it just felt *right*
As is evident from my username here, I've gone by "Earth" for the past decade and a half, to the point anyone who met me online up until I transitioned called me Earth by choice instead of my deadname, despite them knowing it. Potential names is part of the introspection that led me to coming out publicly, since I used it as a way to feel around how I wanted to present; I chose the name "Terra" since it embodied the name "Earth" I had used for so long before, and wasn't all that far off from my deadname.
I picked my name as Hakea, as it’s a tree that I like
* **Taking Charge:** Recognizing your needs and taking action to feel more comfortable is empowering. * **Openness to Change:** Embracing a new name opens a new chapter in your life, and that's exciting! * **Exploration:** The process of finding a new name can be a fun adventure of self-discovery.
I took my name from an old children’s picture book mystery book series I had loved as a kid. She was the first female characters I remember identifying with—probably because she looked like me and was a little tomboyish and very ADHD coded, lol.
Growing up I was taught to dislike when people used nicky for my nickname. Now i am embracing it but spelled Nikki.
I used the name Maria for a good 90% of my female characters in the stories I write, decided to steal it for myself!
Originally i picked Victoria as a compromise of my first pick (Vivian) but it felt too stuck-up and it didn't jive with me. The problem i was having was that i didn't want to pick a name that was too drastically different from my deadname because i was scared of being myself full-time, so i picked something that had a nickname that was similar to my deadname, but i just didn't like it at all. It never felt like people were speaking to me directly. Once i went with Vivian, it all felt so right that i rolled with it and never looked back. To this day it feels like i was born with the name, as natural as it can be.
I saw the series POSE and fell in love with the actress Angel, the way it sounds, how feminine it is and sweet; however, I am hispanic and Angel is mainly used for men, so I chose the french version of Angel for women which would be Angèlle. It’s pretty, elegant, feminine and I can still go by “angel” as a nickname.
I wanted one connected to my culture. I’m Jewish, and I wanted a Jewish name. Also, there’s a Jewish custom of not naming your kids after people you know well who are still alive (it’s a major insult), so I wanted to follow that when naming myself. Those two criteria were the only ones I had. I ended up picking a name that’s been common both in the Jewish community and in the wider world, but which is often pronounced differently in both. I like both pronunciations, and the fact that there are two different ones is kinda cool.
When I first came out 17 years ago, I chose the name Felicity, because it means happiness. Friends called me FiFi for years, I miss that. Later, when I was 23 or so I decided to change my name to Sinead. It's a feminine form of my deadname, proudly Irish, and most people think of Sinead O'Connor, who's a total badass.
I made a big list, my best friend made a big list, we cross-referenced and had one shared entry, which became my new name. It has personal significance for me as well but it helped to get outside perspective on how I come across to others. I picked my middle name completely on a whim without consulting anyone. Love both names and felt immediately comfortable using them.
I went through a list of names and I saw one and I went like "huh... That one's nice" and I really like it and it feels like me. I think it's partially a gut feeling so allow yourself to just kinda not overthink it
Okay, so. My dead name is quote un-quote unisex. But I've met so many men with the name and have only heard of two women with the name, and one is trans. So people were trying to convince me to keep my deadname because they said it's unisex, which I disagree. And because of that one famous trans girl, right? There is no way in hell. I can't stand my deadname. For a while, I was using Vivian for my video game characters. So that was immediately what I went for. I love "V" names. I pondered Opal, Marceline, and Celeste. Opal is my favorite stone, and it's now my middle name. When I came out to my mother, it was over text message. I told her my new name, and she was accepting and loving. She liked Vivian, but she suggested Vivilyn. And I immediately fell in love with it. I texted her back, "MOM! how did you know my name!?!?!" Vivilyn has the same sound at the end of it as my deadname. It has helped me with recognizing and answering to my new name. As a bonus, I feel like Vivilyn totally fits my personality. The only downside is, sometimes, if I dont hear it quite right when people mumble, it will straight up sound like my deadname. I actually go by Vivi more often than anything else to avoid that, but I do love hearing my whole name pronounced. I can't guarantee you will have that, "Holy shit, that's my name!!!" moment. But if you like old names, I might suggest a few Vera Evelyn Ellie Victoria If you resonate with my name, feel free to adopt it 🫶
For my eventual legal one, I just kinda changed as little as possible, because effort. I then decided to have as many names as I want (Most people already have 2 cause of screen names vs legal names), so I ask people to call me different things depending on how close we are. I've got 6.
I always knew my name since seeing a tv show on Nickelodeon titled with my name as a child lol I’ve always loved the name and it actually fits me too!
i out sourced to to my friends then picked one I like, as it turns out mum like it to
For me I picked Chloe as a new first name for two reasons. 1 I didn’t want anything close to my deadname and 2 I always loved the name Chloe so it just fit. Grace was chosen as a middle name to remind myself to give others Grace as well as my self in life. I have only changed it in a few places so not heard it or even used it that much yet. But know I love it. It is odd to hear it used in the few places and people that have been told but if someone uses it and I am not expecting it, it does not register yet too me to even really notice.
I looked for names with the same starting letter and similar syllables and then asked my mom to choose one.
My new name, Saga, kinda just popped into my head. I think I overheard it in a conversation. I always thought it was a good name since it's scandinavian and I'm scandinavian, it's very unique and most likely I won't run into anyone sharing it, it's short and fast to spell on a keyboard (compared to my deadname) and I liked it because I *thought* it didn't follow any of the trans girl stereotypes with being named after goddesses or fictional characters. Turns out Saga is the norse goddess of stories and the localised name for Amity Blight from the Owl House in my country, so jokes on me xD As for adjustment period I can't say much since I'm not out yet, and the people I'm out to don't use my name, but god I can't wait. I can't even imagine I'll have to adjust because I'd I happen to hear Saga in a conversation I'll immediately react to it, and I love getting called Saga online already <3
I really liked the name autumn and I’m still getting used to it 😅
I stole my name from caitlin snow from the flash but switched it to my preferred spelling of Caitlyn
I already really liked names ending in -ia (eg. Olivia, Amelia) and I was watching howls moving castle with some friends. The way they kept saying Sophie sounded nice so I took Sophia and use Sophie as a nickname
I made a couple characters in a MMO and tried a few different names and I wound up sticking with Kira. I thought it was a pretty name.
I've considered two name Cassandra Jean. A new name I like with my mom's middle name. I have also recently considered Jessica Erin, which is close to my current name.
Soooooo I put a buncha names in a hat that I stole from girls I went to highschool that I liked the sound of when I was 15, I pulled out Jenny first, then I emptied the rest of hats contents into the trash can, and that's my name now. That's the whole story. It took me like all of 10 minutes to figure it out? Most of that time was just tearing up paper and writing down names. After that I basically just told all my close friends my new name that same afternoon, they started using it immediately for me, and that was that. I just got more and more used to hearing it over time until I finally got to legally change it when I was 22, and then I never had to hear my deadname again in reference to me ever again. That took place 26 yrs ago. I literally spent more time figuring out what I wanted for lunch today then I did picking out my name.
Before I did the hat thing... I had very briefly considered the feminine version of my Deadname. That's when I immediately realized that was basically exactly what my mom's name was. She basically took the male version of her own name and used it for mine so that idea got dropped in the trashcan immediately. I had to pick something brand new after that point because I knew I wouldn't be okay with keeping the same initial anymore and trying some variation on it, since then I'd just be reminded of my mothers name all the time. Thus... hat to the rescue.
When I stumbled on a name I thought was nice, I'd go into internet chatrooms with that prospective name as my screen name and talk to people just to see how it felt
Well, short version: my mother had Bianca picked out if I was AFAB, and when she adopted my sister she couldn't change her name to use it, so it's available for me to use now. Ankha is just the nickname I picked out from Bianca.
Took the name of a friend I had in Elementary school, shortened it/took the more casual version because I like the idea of having a nickname. Kaitlyn aka Kate :> to get used to it I'm using it for any low-risk thing where it doesn't actually matter what the name inputted is sometimes I doubt my name but whenever I go looking for a new one to try out, none of them sound like *my* name as much as Kate does.
My wife helped me make some rules. Do I want to change first and middle or just first names? I changed both with my new middle being a gender neutral derivative of my old first name. Do I want my initials to stay the same or will it bother me if my initials change? I kept my first name the same letter so first/ last initials remained the same but first/middle/last initials did change. If keeping initials then that narrows down to “x” letter names only. Narrow down from there. Then we made a top ten list, weeding out names of people or celebrities I don’t want to be associated with and any names that just sounded odd with my last name. Practices signatures with each and felt them out to see how I liked signing them. Ended up going with number 2 in the top ten list bc number 1 annoyed me to write as a signature 😂
I had a really strong feeling that I should name my daughter Alyssa. Then when I realized I was trans and that part of why I wanted a daughter was because I was trans, it made sense to me to call myself the name I was going to give her.
I named myself after my favorite text editor, and adjusted to it immediately.
Well, me and all my siblings all have a name that starts with A. So I limited myself down to the A names if I chose to stick to that limit. So, I wrote down every name I could think of that starts with A. Then I looked up some to see if there were any more I liked. This took me weeks, maybe even months. Then I narrowed them down. I went from Austin, to what will hopefully some day be Alice. I like my name Austin, I'm just not sure I I want to change it to a more girly name or not yet. Bt Alice is the name I have chosen if I decide to do so.
I just started looking for names that used my initials to simplify some things. In some ways I regret doing that because seeing my initials is still a reminder and causes some dysphoria, but it's getting better. I tried a bunch of names, many favourites of mine just didn't fit right, not Gwendolyn, not Guinevere or names with other letters like Anya and Annwyn. Eventually I started trying Gemma. It really fit, it wasn't my favourite name, but it just fit. I was still exploring, but I put it as my preferred name on my hospital profile and promptly forgot I had done so. About 2 weeks later came my next appointment at the gender clinic through the hospital. When the nurse came out to call me from the waiting room she called my name Gemma. I got up immediately and didn't have to think about it at all. I knew it was me and it was like I always had that name. From then on I've stuck with it. It's only been 8 months of being out publicly, but noone deadnames me by accident and some coworkers and friends have even forgotten my deadname. I'm now in a place where everyone either has pretty much forgotten or has never known my deadname. Only some transphobic family members such as my parents, grandparents and sister deadname me on purpose. Though I've caught my mom slip in her resolve a few times and call me Gemma. I've got all the forms submitted for my legal name change now and should get the new birth certificate and certificate of name change in the next few months.
I got Charlotte from my best friend (probably boyfriend/husband in another reality)’s mom of course he and I both agreed that in the reality of have been an equally good Erica since despite being a bad bitch he knows I’m hella sweet.
I spent a couple months researching names and meanings. I tried a few out and asked my friends and family what they though along the way before I settled on Grace Serenity. I think I had a few dozen contenders and a few that had no chance that others suggested (my brother suggested Grunhilde). I've been using it for over a year and I can still be surprised when someone calls me it! My advice is to look at lists of names and find one that has meaning for you. My name kind of encapsulates the feelings of coming to terms with being trans and the second lease on life I got by finally accepting it (with grace and serenity).
So, I originally changed my name to similar to my deadnamed just a feminine version. I thought I was okay with it for a while, but I realized I chose it to make other people's lives easier. And I started getting dysphoria and this is gonna sounqd far fetched but Everytime I would hear it it would give me like flashbacks on a minor scale (PTSD). A lot of my family used it to disrespect me and not in a affirming way, that would shorten it to a nick name so that they didn't have to call me that too, so it just tainted the whole way my name sounded as like I said it was similar just feminine version. I would like hear their voices repeating my dead name back to me and the memories of the abuse would come flying back, it ended up bothering me so bad I just started going by a new name. Which is my middle name, it wasn't hard to adjust and people don't ask questions either, since a lot of people go by their middle name non trans reasons. It resonated with me way better and now I get no dysphoria and my name is just kind of, my name? It doesn't make me squeamish or give me anxiety or being any flashbacks or any uneasyness, it's just, my name. Which is very satisfying, it took a while to get use to a new name again, but once it stuck I haven't looked back
I was originally looking for something more androgynous and had recently watched trinity seven so I chose Arin as she was my favourite character and ended up really liking it and feeling more me when I started using it
Went through a few before I settled on Emily, it may be “basic” but it makes me happy. :)
Went through a few before I settled on Emily, it may be “basic” but it makes me happy. :)
I went through a handful of names, and my friends were always very supportive. I only kept it to them at that point, but when I found the name that I knew was mine, I made the effort to request it from others. Nobody was truly bashful or weird about it except my parents at first. One of those stubborn pride things. I specifically asked my siblings to make an effort to use my new name and set an example, and with time everybody followed naturally.
I found a fem version of my nickname tbh I rlly liked it and kept it
One way is readying through baby name sites and choosing whichever ones feel most right.
I don't know how, but the name April just came to me. It was one of the first names I ever thought of, and nothing has ever topped it since. It feels like I've been reborn with it, almost like I didn't even choose it.
i came up with the name merphi for myself. i knew the name murphy and thought it was really chte and wanted to call myself that, but it’s more of a masculine name. so i change up the spelling and then boom, fem name.
I am incredibly indecisive and was in the same situation. I just browsed a popular names for girls list and tried to find one that sounded like me. Took a while but trying out the first one now to see if it fits.
Learning to answer to my new name was way easier than unlearning answering to my deadname. I picked my name so long ago I don't even know how I settled on it. I know it had been my default name in video games for a while.
It took me around 2 years to finally decide on a name, whittling down a list bit by bit (it's not Gayle). When i finally got to a name i wanted to try, first my care coordinator and my therapist started calling me it to see how it felt (i cried the first time). Then i told my friend and she started using it. I started to really like it, so i told all the important people in my life, then my job, then changed on facebook. At first, i didn't correct people when they used my deadname because i was just kinda thinking, "It's ehat they're used to." Which probably made it take a little longer for me to get used to it. Luckily, my friend and a super awesome coworker were much better at aggressively correcting people than me. Once i had my name legally changed, after about a year, i started getting better at correcting people. I also, at that point, started refusing to respond to people who used my deadname. Now, there aren't a lot of people left in my life who know my deadname aside from that first friend and my family. I do occasionally still have to correct my mom. She's very supportive, but she and i tend to mess with each other and say insane stuff, so she will occasionally exclaim, "Oh my god, deadname!" Then apologize and correct herself. If she says it and doesn't realize it, my practiced line is, "mom, i love you very much. My name is *Not Gayle*"
My given name had a "C" sound so I wanted to keep something that started with a similar sound so it wouldn't be too hard getting used to answering it. I made a list of all the names that start with a C or K that I could think of and when I wrote down "Kendall" it just felt absolutely perfect to me. I get more compliments from people on my name so it must be a good fit. Additionally, it wasn't terribly hard to get used to, but even now 2 years after I have been using this name, I still get a little jolt of happiness when I hear someone say it 🥰🥰
I only just settled on a name like a week ago. I've been trying to figure out what my new name should be for as long as I've been questioning, which has been a long damn time. Early on I decided what I would change my middle name to, as it's the feminine form of my previous middle name that I never really used whatsoever. Then recently a friend brought up that name as a name for a pet and I was like "oh hey that's my middle name!" (My chosen middle name that is) and they were like "Can I call you that?" I later explained that it's not legally my middle name it's just one I chose, somehow I'd never previously considered actually just using it as my first name. Everybody who I've told about it all seems to really like it and say that it suits me. Some have even already adjusted to using it on me. So I feel pretty confident in saying that I've finally found my name :)
Seeing everyone's nice stories about how they got their names makes me feel horrible lmao, I just stole D.Va's from overwatch name and went with my grandmother's name as a second name because it sounded nice 😭😭😭 But it's been pretty warming since I've started using it, I feel like it's going to be lot of paperwork to make it my legal name tho
I've never been really all that creative and had trouble deciding on a name. I ended up asking my ex, my (gf at the time ofc) to help me. We ended up with cleo, which is what I go by now (around people that know). And it was odd getting used to it, especially whereas 99% of people don't know I'm trans so It was hard getting used to the people who did know, calling me by my new name.
Back in 2018, I would join random discord servers and introduce myself with a name I was thinking on and hang around there for a while. On my third or fourth try I eventually settled on the name I still use today
I knew I wanted a first name that started with "A." My last name starts with "M" and I wanted my initials to be AM. Because I'm an incessant Against Me! fan... lol I then chose Avery because my favorite movie is The Color Purple and I always loved Shug Avery's character because what she stood for to Miss Celie. She helped her find her inner beauty, realize her strength, and showed her that someone could love her. And, I wanted to be my own Shug Avery. 🥹🙃 It honestly took awhile to get used to a new name. Maybe like 6 months. And, sometimes my family deadnames me (innocently) and I still reflexively respond to it. Which, sets off all sorts of emotions. I've had my new name for about a year and a few months now. But after some time, it just feels like me. It gets easier.
Oh, and I also chose the middle name Jane.. because, we'll, ya know. Laura Jane Grace..
I landed on Gem because of something I was reading to help me with a tattoo design. The more I read the more it made sense to me. I'm still getting used to it, but so far everyone I've asked to use it has been amazing, except my mom.
so y’all heard of pokemon sun and moon right?
Idk before I knew I was trans I said that if I ever had a girl or suddenly turned into a girl I’d name her Beatrix from the game slime rancher. Idk why I just thought it sounded nice
I have a fondness for the character Rosalina, my Sister's name ends in "-lyn" and I wanted to honor her while having a pretty name from a pretty and inspiring character.
My mom once said that if she had a daughter, her name would be Laura, so when she accepted me i kept it as a gift and because i liked the name, lol At the beginning, it was strange. When people had my dead name and someone called for them, i instinctively reacted for like 6 months, so I reacted to both names for a while
Honestly I’m thinking of picking a new name too. An ex friend suggested Scarlett to me. Tbh I’m thinking Madeline maybe
Lots of people will change the spelling of their current name. Ie: Billy to Billie. Others will make feminine versions of their name. Ie: George to Georgina or Georgette. I didn't want to do that. I decided to have a little fun with it. The name Amanda kinda sounds like *A man. Duh!* So I decided on that name.
My name is Lyla, and I first saw the name on a Spider-Man 2099 trading card in his bio when I was a young kid, like 9-10 I think. It was the first name that came to my mind when I thought what name I’d want be called by as a woman, and it’s been great being able to be out and be called by my chosen name, even if my parents sometimes still forget
i just asked my mom what she would have named me had i been born female
Honestly? My current name used to be my username. After a rough breakup (rough only for me, the decoupling itself was smooth) I found my name to be meaningless so I just asked people to call me by my pseudonym until I found a new one. It was neutral enough. I never found a new name and grew too attatched to the name so I simply just... stepped into it. Took a while to get used to hearing that name spoken, especially in like, a uni lecture and just have it be normal. The hardest part was adjusting to the mundanity once it had settled in for the long haul
I just looked up popular baby names that year, picked a few I liked, tried em out, found the one, found a spelling I liked, and now I can't imagine my name being anything else
I've always liked mythology, and always liked Persephone. Plus shes got sort of a re-birth thing going on which is fitting. But a big issue with my deadname is that is was too long and Persephone was even longer. So I went with Kore, but that was getting read as "corey" which I do not vibe with. So I went with Kora instead, pronounced like the avatar, but not inspired by.
I've always fought with myself over a name, whether it was a username, my actual name, or whether I believed I was trans or not - and this has been the case for at least a decade at this point. Whenever I do find names I like, they're usually from media that I like. Only recently have I found a name that I love and would probably feel comfortable with being called by almost anyone, that being Vivian. I think Vivian sounds really cool and cute; I took it from a Paper Mario TTYD character. also after searching it up, I found out it's a unisex name which makes it even better in my eyes!
I don’t know why I picked Leah, I didn’t know anyone by that name and it was unique enough. As for getting used to it, it was entirely my best friend. He asked about names then started to use it in private… until he got drunk and said it in a group discord call .-. Everyone knew I was trans already so I didn’t mind.
It took a week short of 4 years after my egg cracked to finally find a name. The first one just didn't feel like a good fit after starting HRT. This one was just talking with a few friends and it randomly came to mind. Ran it past a long time friend and partway through when I realized I didn't care what he thought about it. That's when I knew. Still in the trying it on phase so I can't say much about getting used it.
I studied geology so naming myself after the earth was pretty easy. It was either Terra or Gaia and Gaia is waaaaaaay too crunchy for me. So I’m Terra.
It kinda just popped into my head lol
I went thru a list and found ones that fit with who I felt like, and I eventually ended up on Emma
Mine came to me like wow malisa. Good start is old family names like after loved frend
when I was like.. 13 I was making a facebook account to act as the person I wanted to be- chose a name for the account and continued from there. FFW to 21, when I realized I'm trans, I had 8 years of getting used to hearing people call be Ruby in normal conversation (thanks twitch lol, otherwise verbally it'd be weird) so no adjustment period. there was an adjustment period detaching my deadname from the response center in my brain though.
Imogen - There aren't a lot of fem names starting with "I" such as my dead name and I learned of it from a minecraft server moderator working for the youtuber "strauberryjam" like 12 years ago.
Legit serious I was named by studio wildcard the makers of ark survival evolved. The game suggested I name one of my characters Ayla and I liked it so much I decided to name my irl character Ayla. As for getting used to it I was already more used to people calling me by my Internet name than my deadname when I got the name change and my Minecraft username is Ayla so the majority of the people using my Internet name were using that so I was used to responding to it. Also I got my name change while I was waiting for a start date at my current job and was unemployed (by choice) so there's only one single person who knows both of my names and she knows better than to get on my bad side which made the name swap easy.
The only real criteria I had was that I wanted to keep my first initial. My first choice was Callie since it’s about as close to a feminine version of my deadname as you can get. But at the time I had a friend named Kali and I thought it would be confusing if we both had the same name so I went with my second choice, Celeste. Most people think I got it from the video game but I actually got it from the Animal Crossing character because she’s always been one of my favorite characters
I stole it from an anime character (Violet), I'm still getting used to it, but it's euphoric being called by my chosen name
I made a shit ton of alt accounts on discord and just joined a few servers and played games with people while I tested names out. After a while, I narrowed it down to Avy
My middle name and my chosen name are from the same culture/general background. They have similar/related meanings and connotations.
Lmfao fun story, I was publicly my chosen name for like, 5 years before I realized I was trans. It kinda just started a nickname from my online handle at the time and I leaned into it. My ex even only knew me as that name. I found out like, a month before realizing I was trans that while it was a unisex name, the spelling I used was female only. Realizing that my true self had been fighting to get out for that long was…..something
My experience is a “bit” of a cautionary tale - I picked a new first name, it was based on a musical of a woman who was saying goodbye to a false identity, but in a really sweet, loving way. The musical was the first time I was brought to tears and convinced that I didn’t need to fight who I truly was. Additionally, me and my wife had considered changing our last name to something original, as we didn’t have a whole lot of reasons to be excited for either of our maiden names. Cue months and months later when the combination turned out to be a famous trans pornstar. Now I wouldn’t have minded that so much, but she proudly took up slurs as advertising material, and I was super afraid of my name being associated with those slurs - but still, I loved the first name. Me and the wife discussed it and we had gotten a lot closer with her family throughout the first year of my transition, so we decided we were happier taking her last name. At the end of the day, it shouldn’t matter if someone else lived their life some sort of way, but I do still recommend googling your new name and making sure you aren’t going to regret any unexpected connotations. As for getting used to it, I also strongly recommend learning whether or not you like nicknames lol. My name is Natalie, and I wish I affirmed that instead of letting everyone call me Nat. I have grown used to it, but the full name definitely gives me that warm fuzzy feeling and I have had trouble getting across to friends that I wouldn’t mind hearing it a bit more lol
As a writer of short stories, I have two PDFs from Google. One is 1000 girl names, the other is 1,000 boy names. I use that a lot for my characters and then sometimes I just get really creative and go off list. As a way to help with relieving the dysphoria I was feeling, I started writing this one story. It started off as a short story then turned into a small book and now is actually turning into a full-blown book. The lead character's name I soon realize was me. So I adapted her name which isn't too far off of my dead name. It was actually pretty easy to get used to the new name. However while I was stealth, going back and forth between the dead name and my new girl name was a bit of a challenge. That was back in June of 2018. Since then I've changed it to my legal name. My suggestion to you for choosing a name is downloading your preferred genders name list, get a big Notepad and go through the list and find all the names that you like and write them down. Then you start eliminating them one by one until you finally, with the name you feel is right for you. Finding a middle name is the same process. Basically you go through the list a second time, say allowed your first name that you chose and then the middle name and see not only how that sounds but how it feels. The process could last couple hours or it could even last a couple of days. Always have second and third choices on hand just in case you decide you don't like your first choice. It's a pretty big responsibility choosing your own name. This is something, when you legally change your name, you'll have to live with for the rest of your life. I hope this helps you. Feel free to send me a private message if you want to talk further.
So I am a massive geeky dork. I picked my name based on my favourite power ranger. so I fell in love with geki violet from the japanese series juken sentai geki ranger. so when I picked a name I chose violet. Mostly because purple isnt really a name haha. . the way I got used to it was playing role play games particularly ones set in a modern setting. So we played a alot of call of cthulhu, I wasnt out at the time, so I got the players to use my character name, something they really should be doing anyway, and I trialed a lot of names this way. if a name didnt work I might have oragised a little accident for that character. oh well guess I need a new charatcer now. try a new name. in saying that i dont actually go by violet anymore and it sounds weird. most people have shortened it to vi which now actually sounds more natural. also I should note I am still pre everything and only now just starting to present as the person inside.
Took a while. I also thought I was ok with my dead name. It was primarily a masculine name but was sometimes used for women so I thought I’d never change it. Of course back then I didn’t think I’d transition either. A friend asked me what I want my new name to be and the concept struck me. For weeks every female name I encountered went through a filter in my mind to determine if it could be mine. Nothing fit. Then I was talking theology with a coworker who enjoyed engaging on that subject and had a eureka moment. Once I found it, it just clicked like it’d always been my name. Then every time I heard it in the beginning there was this mix of surprise and delight and pride. That said I know lots of people who took time to grow into their new names. I’ve also known a lot of people who’ve changed their name multiple times. My favorite human swapped through maybe 5 names before finding one that is literally perfect
I picked a name off a website of popular names from the year I was born. I was okay with it, but I had very, very good reasons to change my last name as well. So as I was getting my identification and stuff everywhere updated, I kept seeing my chosen name paired with my previous surname, and that made me sick (CSA in my past from my father). So I grew to hate my chosen name as much as my deadname, essentially. Meanwhile a username I had on twitch made a streamer give me a nickname, and I liked how she used it, and my other friends in that stream, and at the last minute before my filing I changed the middle name I was going to use to that nickname from the twitch stream. It's now the name all my friends use for me, and if I had the money and witnesses, I would pay for a second name change, to make this my first name and get one more degree of separation from my abuser's last name.
My name is a meme that happened to have an opposite name. So I picked the opposite as my new name. Yup, I literally chose my name on a gender based meme.
When I was a kid, my neighbor would go out to lunch all the time with my father and I. He would always talk about his best friend Madeline. I always loved hearing that name and I didn’t know why. Years later at my first job I worked with a Madeline. She was pretty and really nice, but over time I realized I liked her name possibly more than her actual self. 🤭 Then a few years after that with my girlfriend at the time we would talk about names if we had kids and Madeline always was my number one for a daughter. Then finally a few years after that I realized I was trans and why I have always loved the name Madeline so much…because it was my name! My friends think I took inspiration from Celeste, and while I love that game, it wasn’t my inspiration like it was for other girls out there! But it’s another reason why Madeline is a great name for me. 😊 Friends, family, and coworkers have been calling me by this and Maddie, and the butterflies won’t stop! It’s been half a year now. It’s a feeling I never had with my dead name. I think you just know. But you may have to have people call you that. When you hear it out of your head by people you care about and those who also care about you, it all makes sense and you’ll know if it’s you.
I knew I loved my name long before I properly admitted to myself that I was trans. Then I heard it in a TV show and it got me thinking about it more and how much I actually wished it was my name. Then I thought I wanted it to be my daughters name. The whole ordeal of finding my name was one of the things that actually helped me to realize I was trans. It's hard to say how it felt to get used to my new name. All I can really remember was that after I picked it and had some people using it any time I heard my dead name I would feel sick. So the distain for my old name was too overwhelming to really notice how I felt about my new name. The hearing my dead name bit is also made worse because it's a noun and a verb so it just comes up in every day speech sometimes.
I developped my name as a i was still an egg but had suspicion i may be trans so i tried to pick a feminine name that fit me. At first because i wanted to keep my initials. So i thought of names like Ariane, Ariana, Alice, Aline but i didn't like the archest of the two former and somehow i found the the i in the second syllable didn't fit me. Also I wanted a name that could be shorten without the first vowel for a nicknam, but Riana, Lissia, Lina all didn't fit me. Then the name Adèle strike me and for a while i was also considering Adeline, but Delina felt wrong as a nickname. And then, as i'm a linguistics student and autistic (linguistics is one of my main special interests), I discovered in a particular brand of dialects in my home region, a sound change would move the stress from a /i/ to an /a/ and delete the /i/, and I somehow had the idea to apply it to my name Adelína > Delína > Deliná > Delná, as it has become one of my favorite sound change (autism !). And i just felt in love with it, to the point that i'm not even planning now to have "Adeline" or "Adelina" as a full name aha. At the start i used to use a neutralised version of my deadname when i considered myself NB inbetween and then I came out to my friend group and using she/her and Delna made me so euphoric that it cracked my shell. However this euphoria would fade with time and I would get confuse as my alexithymia (blindness to understand own's emotion) would bare me from understanding if my feeling of unfamilarity was dysphoria or not (spoiler: it was not) plus the fact that for a while my dead name would not give me dysphoria (this changed, now it totally does). I needed many months before getting used to my chosen name and i'll soon do the papper work to change it officially. Recently a friend of mine came as FtMasc and somehow i feel exactly the same feeling of unfamilarity when i use his new pronouns and their new name than when people called me my chosen name and pronouns at first so I'm now 100% certain that this feeling back then wasn't dysphoria but in fact just uneasiness to novelty (autism! again xD)
I wanted something that made me feel powerful and badass but was also connected to my life. I’ve always escaped with video games. Named my son after a video game character and wanted to share that with him. I was speedrunning Metroid: Dread at the time and they have killer robots that chase you down and extract your DNA (😘) that are called E.M.M.I. Or Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier. When I considered that as a name it immediately felt bad ass and powerful and made me feel strong and courageous and ready to tackle transitioning. I was obsessed immediately. Like my son’s name, I wanted a longer more traditional sounding version of my name, like a reverse nickname, that I could use when I wanted. I didn’t want to be another transwoman named Emily (nothing wrong with that name at all it just didn’t fit me) so I extended it to Emmilyn. I usually go by Emmi though. Em if we are in a situation where I need to stealth. OhEmmiGee for a screen name (OMG).
I carried a notebook around for several months and wrote down any name I liked. I'd read the list daily, and eventually picked the name that stuck out to me It was a bit of an adjustment, but I've been out for 16 months. I don't answer to my dead name anymore, it's actually a bit of an issue at the hospital, Dr office and dentist. They have my "preferred" name on file, but they never check They're usually embarrassed, but they never seem to learn Like I know for a fact that they put it in () next to my legal name at the cardiologists office instead of the preferred name box, so she even knew people wouldn't check It didn't work, still used the wrong name. I was just sitting there, no idea I'm getting called up