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

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.

@Willow I had been reading about Amelia Earhart in the weeks leading up to coming out to myself as trans. I accepted myself as a woman on July 1st, 2023 (thanks to @Impossible_PhD ‘s wonderful blog) and chose Amelia the next day. Somehow I didn’t put two and two together at the time that July 2nd was the anniversary of her disappearance (despite obviously having read it at the time).

Anyway, she’s so incredibly awesome.

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.”

@Willow My first name was given, at first. It always resonated and felt like me, especially when I learned it might be suitable for either gender.

I only took it recently, though—realizing I might be able to make it mine, and shape it into something more than who I was before.

My last name isn't one I'm attached to. I opted not to take my wife's, which is arguably better, but I haven't decided on a more fitting one just yet. For now, a placeholder, and a sullen reminder of the generational trauma I'm working to cast off.

@anyia All of the names I know for you fit you so well. ️@Willow@chaosfem.tw

@internet_ryan Thank you!

@Willow back in the dark ages, a bunch of my friends were in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and they managed to drag me in a little bit (it wasn't hard). When you go to a SCA event, you're usually in period character - it's basically a huge LARP in all but name. So I needed a character, and that character needed a name. Given my hair and general look and interests, Scottish or Irish was obvious, so I went into the depths of the college library and dug out a book of old Celtic names. Somewhere in there I found "Rowan" which it told me meant "little red one" or something like that, and I figured that would fit. That it was also a tree crossed my mind, and I kinda liked that, too, but of course I've never seen a rowan tree. I started using it at SCA, and also as a character in a group story we were writing on the BBS at the time. It fit me, quite well, and much better than the super annoyingly common name that I'd been given by my parents. Everyone started calling me that all the time, and by the time I left college, my given name was all but forgotten.

Turns out that it's an equally good name for many genders, and nearly 30 years later when I figured out a few things about my gender, my name was one thing that was still well and truly mine.

@Willow hello, mine is quite simple.
There was a character on a Brazilian soup opera of the 90's that was a model of femininity to be.
I dreamt about this name after that and I think it suits me well 🥰

@Willow I wanted a name which was just as boring and common as my deadname. No soulsearching, no revelations, just picked the first one that came to mind.

@Willow A long time ago, I remember seeing an anime with a character named "Lieselotte"; I didn't much care for the character, or the "lotte", but the "Liese" earwormed into my brain and stayed there until my egg cracked.

@Willow
Gwendolyn: I wanted to stick within my heritage, and I wanted to keep the G (my deadname also began with one).
Danielle: I wanted to honor one of my trans forebears, so I named myself for Danielle Bunten-Berry, a pioneer in multiplayer video gaming.
Young: My chosen family's name.

@Willow I chose the username "killerbee13" when I was (as you might expect) 13 years old, based on an old childhood nickname. Though my more common childhood nickname was "Bug" fwiw (for no other reason than that I liked bugs). Eventually, years later, like when I was about 20-21, some of my friends (including my erstwhile partner) whom I'd met online started calling me Bee instead of kb (which is how I'd generally abbreviated my username) and I realized I liked the sound of it and it just kind of ended up becoming my name, separately from just being my username. Or at least, it became one of my names. I've kept my birth name too, because I like it. Maybe I'll have a third eventually, who knows. I might even actually pick it myself, though tbh I kinda doubt it.