My lovelies, I want to hear the wonderful stories of how your name came to you.

@Willow …

after enough iterations of playing Mimsy/Miriam, it kind of stuck in my head as *me,* with Borogove a close second (even if it sounded vaguely masc). this may have been underscored by the fact i was using it in… ahem… a lot of text-based genderbending erotica games.

so when i came out as a woman, it was a pretty simple decision. im officially Miriam Borogove Robern (at least in Canada), with Mimsy as my nickname/mom-name. (we're "mama" and "mimsy" and both "mom")

…

@Willow …

later i was delighted to discover that im not the first "Mimsy," and that has been used as a nickname for Miriams before me.

later, friends shortened it further to Mims, which i love, and one of my coworkers calls me "Mim" like Mad Madame Mim from Disney's Sword in the Stone.

but mostly, im named for a nineteenth-century shitpost, which i like to think is very apropos.

@eruonna @Willow twas brillig in the slithy toves!

@Willow Mine is very, very boring. I made a list of criteria:

1. Unambiguously feminine
2. British or Jewish (my ethnic background)
3. Not implausible for a cis woman my age
4. Has several nicknames which could fit different personalities (because who knew how I might change?)
5. Ideally, same first initial (I liked my signature, which only has my initials)

And then I hunted through baby name lists until I found something I liked that fit the bill. “Becca” has never felt like it’s a perfect expression of my soul or whatever; it’s just pretty nice and a definite upgrade from the original.

@NicolaElle I love Nicola! My Second Life name was Nicola Escher, named after one of my favorite femme fatales, Nicola Six (https://livesinlit.com/nineteen-years-old-nicola-six/)

I did think about Nicola for me, but my stepfather is a Nick, and I didn’t dig that association.

(I also dated a Nicola at university in Scotland briefly, but we won’t mention that. And she actually went by Nikki.)

@Willow didn't put much thought into it, tbh. I wanted something short n sweet, with the same first initial as my birth name. it works

@Willow also not particularly gendered, that was the other metric

@Willow my first name I had picked out long ago, long before I reckoned with being trans. A twin sister I never had, an echo to myself, a "what if?"

I joke that it took me 35 years to decide to come out, and about 35 seconds to pick a name.

@Willow@chaosfem.tw Kasdeya was an angel who was cast out of heaven for teaching the human race about medicine, poison, abortion, psychology, and hypnosis. she's almost like the Abrahamic equivalent of Prometheus. I could probably write a 12-paragraph essay about what all that means to me lol

@Willow Mine’s rather mundane. When I was young, somewhere around ten maybe, I imagined what my name would be if I was a girl. So I chose a first and middle name that matched my deadname initials. I decided my first and middle names would be Elisabeth Teresa. When my egg cracked last year I decided to drop Elisabeth and just go with Teresa.

That is the coolest, I had no idea there were abrahamic stories like that.

@Willow Singing a song from A Goofy Movie. Not even kidding.

@Willow
I got my name in a dream. I was called Penny, and I couldn't shake it. I tried a few other names but nothing else felt right

@Willow

Three stories I will tell, should you listen. Three stories I will tell, but only one name.

My display name here hearkens back to wanting solitude and rest from the world. 'Twas a day when I was unwell and down with a fever, and wanted to escape the pains of the world for a moment or several. So I rolled a fresh alt on WoW, hiding from the eyes of the guild. Casting about for a name, and unhappy with the state of self, my mind found its way to a vengeance demon, and from there to a diminutive version of her name. As I travelled the plains of Durotar and beyond, I grew increasingly fond of the self-sufficiency and daring of my character, and I found myself spending more and more time with her. Her. It was always a her, in rpgs. There were no signs. She and I grew together, her embodying many of the traits I wished for myself. Her story turned epic, many adventures were had, and many a fond memory created. As the online gaming turned into real-life gatherings with the guild, I entered a space where I was simply known as Anyia. It was more efficient to refer to each other by main character names regardless of gender match, or so we said. So Anyia I became, not just in-game, but out of game as well. It was a name I happily accepted, being a representation of an aspirational version of myself. I nearly took at is my middle name when I did my paperwork transition.

Nearly, but not in the end. But before I tell the tale of why, I shall touch upon the actual first name I settled upon. This story, much more mundane than the previous, is one girt by practicality as much as resonance. I knew I wanted to keep my initials, for some measure of continuity and ease of changing all manner of accounts over. Having not had the flash-of-insight that several trans people have written about, I went about finding a good name the brute force way. I sifted through name databases sections for my initial, pulling out potential options, feeling them out, checking their historical meaning, rejecting a lot of them for their religious associations. There were some I quite liked and would've adopted, if not for their deital connotations. In the end, the field was narrowed down to a single entry, and entry with nature associations and of groundedness. This name I took for myself, not because it matched what I felt, but for it matching what I wanted to feel. A feminine name, but one which
implies strength, endurance, grace and composure.

Thus the first name was settled. The middle name, of which I wanted a single one, down from my prior three, to make my life easier in this country where assumptions of naming structure are strong and limiting. And for this name, Anyia was the top contender for a long time. However, I felt conflicted. It felt like a doubling up of the meaning and feeling and intent of my first name. With Anyia the WoW character being the embodiment of those same things (save grace 🤭), the name felt... redundant. In this limbo I stayed for some time, until one night when a new part of me arose. I quote from my diary:

"But to return to the other night, the name that I softly spoke to myself in my dream was one with very different emotional attachment. A name which I loved the moment I heard it though could not say why, and which then evolved to include that raw attachment of a childhood friend who stands by you through thick and thin. A name, spoken softly, which is at once softness, fire and wildness. A name, spoken softly. [... <firstname> <middlename>], now that caresses the speaking tongue and listening ear. [...] It wraps the solidity of my first name with a flowering vine, complementing, making whole. I will hold on to this name for now. It feels like it may be me."

That name I took for myself. It was a name I'd only heard spoken in a game a long time ago, and for all I know I may be the only person with it as an official name. But it feels like me, or rather, one of my aspects. It is the name I am the fondest of and treasure the most, only reluctantly giving it out on forms. It's for *me*.

These tales three, are those of me.

@Willow On my very first gig in the entertainment industry (half a lifetime ago), the Production Manager’s name was Maeve O’Meara. I was delighted by this name, and if I had had a daughter instead of a son, there’s a good chance that would’ve been her name. “Maeve” shares some sounds with my legal first name, and I’m some amount Irish, so it came up almost immediately in my mind when I started to think about a new name. Why fight it?

@miriamrobern @eruonna @Willow I love your name! As you can probably guess from my username here, I've always had a bit of a thing for Jabberwocky and the similarly invented Hunting of the Snark.

@Willow I went through all of my favorite names and realized they were all in use by people I lived and was in regular contact with and that would be weird. I finally just added a single letter to my deadname..

I like it, don't get me wrong, but it was not my first choice.

@Willow
Well Claire, my first name, was not so poignant a story. Deadname begins with C. My best friends since college call me C as a nickname. I wanted to keep going by that, so I went through women's names that start with C and Claire, or Clara, was the first that I liked.

My middle name was a longer story. Two of my daughters have the middle name Rose. I liked the names Clara Rose together. I even put that as my name on Reddit for a while. I asked them if they were OK with me using Rose. They were OK, but one of them told me they didn't really like it for reasons which I got. I needed to find a new name.

I really struggled to find a new name. I finally remembered being obsessed with the name Allison when I was going through puberty. The Elvis Costello song mainly. I also remembered fantasizing about being a girl named Allison.

I considered that maybe I should make Allison my first name. But by that point everyone was calling me Claire and I do love that as my first name. I figured I can always go by my middle name later if I wanted. So Claire Allison -- became my legal name.

One final part of the story... When I told my ex-wife that I chose Allison. She got mad at me. She reminded me that when we were trying to choose a name for our oldest daughter, she wanted the name Allison. I made a hard NFW on that, but I wouldn't tell her why. When I told her "obviously, because that's my name" she got it and stopped being mad.

@Willow I've loved my name for as long as I can remember. I don't know when or how or why I started loving it, but I know I've loved it since I was a little girl. I remember encountering my name while reading and stopping to hold on to it. I would think about the name and its spelling, and it always felt delicate and intricate to me. Later in life, when my kids were born, it was at the top of my list for them, but we didn't give it to them. It was just always there at the front of my mind, and I always loved it.

When I came out, I decided to try a local trans support group. It was summer of 2020, so the meeting was on zoom. I had to send an email to get the link. I was still terrified, so I didn't want to use my existing email address, and I decided to create a new email address. I was just going to make a burner address, but when I was prompted for a name, I realized I could finally have the name I always loved. I didn't even have to think about it. I typed Eleanor in the box and never looked back.

@Willow There was a period in which i was feeling out my gender. I wasn't sure whether i was man, woman, both, neither, somewhere in between. I had heard that Starbucks was a good place for maybe-trans people to try out names. So i went. I had decided on "Cassady", after Neal Cassady the beat poet. Gods, i was so pretentious back then. But it was reasonably nongendered, slightly moreso than the shortened version of my birth band.

After a few visits, someone misheard and wrote "Cassie". That felt nice. That was a woman's name. That someone could ever look at me and feasibly think "woman"-- that was unthinkable to me back then. I started shortening it to Cass. But over time, "Cass, short for Cassady" morphed into "Cass, short for Cassandra" without me even noticing.

My wife calls me Cass sometimes. (Mostly when they're annoyed with me, hah.) Cassandra is beautiful but also kind of a mouthful. So most everyone knows me as cassie.

My wife picked Willow for my middle name. I liked it.