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trans and nonbinary people (and cis if you apply!), how did you pick your name?

just interested in hearing peoples stories for how y’all have chosen your new names! doesn’t have to be particularly profound or interesting really, i just like hearing about others experiences.

i’m actually planning on changing my own soon socially despite being cis, and just really like hearing how others came to find their names, as well as am curious about if anyone had to go through more than one to find what’s right for them. i figured this would be the best community to talk about the topic even if i’m not trans :)

136 comments
  • Trans guy here. There was no masc version of my deadname, and my parents didn't have a name picked out for if I'd been AMAB, so those routes were closed to me. I initially tried to pick something where I could keep my initials, but the only names I liked were already "in use" in my social and family circles, and it didn't feel right.

    So I looked at the popularity of my deadname in my birth year, then started from that same rank on the boy name charts for the same year and worked my way out. I found a name of very similar popularity that I really liked, and met my other self-imposed criteria (nickname I liked, no nicknames that I hated, not easily misspelled or confused with a femme name). The benefit of looking at birth year popularity ranks is that I ended up with a name that doesn't sound "too old" or "too young" for me, which may or may not matter to other people.

    My parents did something similar when they named us, so that we'd have names that were recognizable, but we wouldn't share our name with five other kids in our class. (My mom had a very popular name for her age group and she hated it.)

    For my middle name I picked a name I always loved but that I didn't want for my first name, for practical reasons (easily misspelled, gender neutral, much more popular for younger kids than for my age group). In my area, nobody ever knows your middle name unless you go out of your way to tell them, so I let myself have more fun with it.

    It's been close to a decade and I still love both of them. I "tried it on" with friends for a few months before starting legal paperwork, and I'm glad I did. Some other names I tried out didn't stick.

  • I chose my name when I was 12. I don't remember exactly, but I hit on the name Audrey and I was like, "I really like that name". Even back then in the year 2000, I knew I was trans, and so I decided to take the name for time being. It kinda stuck after years and years of being my true name. Unfortunately, I did not come out to anyone for over 20 years, so the only one who knew my name was Audrey was, well, me.

  • i can go first, though again i’m not trans to be clear hahaha

    for context: i’ve honestly never really liked my name, and have gone by a shortened nickname for a few years now with most of my friends. i can actually remember thinking about how i didn’t like it very much when i was probably as young as 7ish, but going by my nickname has helped me feel better about it overall in recent years.

    earlier this year though, probably around january, it really just dawned on me that i don’t feel particularly connected to either my nickname or my legal name. like, even though the nick is better, it’s still just a way to try and get distance from my full name, and i realized it was a possibility for me to just pick another name altogether if i wanted to. so i started searching.

    i didn’t have anything particularly in mind, and i tend to be a bit analytical with things like these, so i came up with some criteria (starting letter, syllables, nickname-able, etc), looked up baby name lists, and got to work. after looking, asking for opinions from friends, and sitting on it for a couple months, one of my friends made a suggestion for one that really “fit” me, and i’ve been pretty attached to it since- max/maxine. it’s cool, a bit masculine, has a more elegant and feminine full version, and is just generally a good fit i think.

    i’ve been going by it online for a few months now and think i really like it, and would like to start going by it when i start at a new college in the fall, but am just nervous about still about if it’s really right for me or not. i’m sure it’ll be fine, but just a thought that’s been sitting in my mind awhile, making me a little anxious.

  • Immigrant to the U.S.

    I got my English name picked out of a hat when I took a summer English class in 1st grade by the teacher who assigned everyone English names. I decided to go with it since I thought it was a chill enough name after I moved to the U.S. a few years later.

  • As someone whose egg cracked very recently I am still unsure if Maya will be my final decision.

    It's tough for me. The female Versions of my deadname were ones ingot bullied with my entire teen years so they have this very negative memory to them.

    First I went in a direction of names I just find nice and pretty I guess. Starting with Sofia which didn't really fit my vibe, then Florence which is a really nice name but a bit too extra for me. Shortened it to Flora but that felt odd.

    For two months now my gf and some friends have been calling me Maya. How did I find it? I reminded of the 3D program Maya. I remembered it's also a name. I liked the sound of it and it felt like it fit my vibe and so far that has been the case

  • Someone in my high school had the name and I really liked it. So I used it after we all graduated so it wouldn't be weird. I actually had picked a different name at first just because I didn't want to come off weird or creepy before we would never see each other again. It is a pretty uncommon name.

  • I was working through a list of nature-related names, looking for an uncommon one that still sounded like a real name. I was almost ready to try out "Ember", but then I saw "Hazel" and it just clicked. So that's what I've called myself ever since!

  • I was 12, I legit don't remember how I even picked it. I tried another name for a couple weeks and thought it was too cringe (easily associated with a famous person), so I switched to my current name.

  • I reused my online handle into a more traditional name, and gave myself a middle name so people nickname me my online handle without prompting lol.

  • I am cis, but my given name was very aged for my generation and grandmotherly which made me self-conscious as a kid.

    When I decided to ditch my name, first I tried using my middle name, but that starts with a different letter and it turns out my brain tunes that out entirely if someone that I wasn't already listening to calls it out. I had to already be engaged in conversation with someone to respond to it, which doesn't work great if someone across the room calls out your name to try to show you something cool. My parents never did the full name scolding so I literally almost never have heard my middle name spoken aloud. My dad even thought I had my deceased sister's middle name the last time I can remember middle names coming up in discussion.

    I gave up on the name change for a couple of years, but in high school I decided to give something else a shot. I started using my first initial, but spelled phonetically, for example: K spelled as Kay or L as Elle. That was the solution I needed. If someone shouts it from across the room, my brain alerts just like with my full first name. It's simple, but it works. I've stuck with it for 23 years now.

    I highly recommend picking something that has a starting sound similar to your current name so your subconscious brain will still pick up on it, otherwise your friends and family will be shouting your new name over and over to get your attention while you are completely oblivious. My kid is trans and I am going through this now from the opposite end of calling the new name out repeatedly with no response because he also picked a name with no similarity to his given name.

    • Never thought about this, this is such a smart thing to consider!

      My new name has no similarity to my old name. Both will get my attention. This may be because we’re just different people with different brains, but it could also be that I introduced my new name in college, where I got lots of practice introducing myself with it, and the new name was the only name with which I heard myself addressed. The old name only comes out with my parents, but I do have 18 years of responsiveness to that name and only that name that are probably difficult to stamp out of my subconscious.

      Also just realized that back when I only had my old name, some people shortened it to a nickname that begins with a different sound. This probably primed my brain to be responsive to that different sound as well, and my new name begins with that sound. Think “Elizabeth” as an old name, people shortening to “Liz,” and settling on “Lily” for a new name. I didn’t consciously pick the new name based on the nickname, but given the nickname was usually only used by people I liked, it’s possible it factored in subconsciously.

  • I read it in a bad sci fi book when I was about 14, and it just stuck in my head until I finally came out. Also I like trees and gin.

  • I had a little Lalafell boy in FFXIV named Cocozan Cozan.

    When I switched to femroe I changed the last name, truncated the first to Coco.

    People knew me as Coco and she/her online and it felt right. Decided to keep the name for myself.

  • I really wanted a name that starts with the letter 'M' because it just felt right. I then looked up "nonbinary/genderneutral names that start with the letter M" I found one with a slight association with my deadname

  • I used to play a ton of online RPGs with a strong focus on actually roleplaying and I pretended I was a girl named Alia. So I'm kind of surprised I never considered that name when I actually came out. In my 20s I started hanging out with an older transwoman who was kind of like my mentor, and she named me Shauna. I ended up back in the closet for about 15 years, but when my egg cracked again a couple of years ago I floated a few options to my partner which the same first initial as my deadname, and she didn't like any of them except Shauna, and to be honest I also liked Shauna the best.

  • Ever since I was a kid, I've loved the video game series Thief, where curse words are often replaced with the word taffer. I chose it as my username, but then it stuck as my actual name when I later came out. Most people just assume I'm related to the guy from Bar Rescue and not that I'm a big fan of a stealth game from the 90s

  • I've read it somewhere and it stuck a chord in me. I started to recognize it everywhere and it just slowly dawned on me that it's my name is guess 😅

136 comments