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

@Willow my name came about after divorce, not because of gender identity, but because I didn't want a surname granted by patriarchy. As a grown human I didn't want to be associated as the property of my father or my ex. I liked the initial of L because JL makes two opposing squares and my middle name was Lynn. But Lynn felt boring... Until I researched the etymology of Lynn, which means Lake in old English. I remember reading that and it just clicked. I am a body of water, a place of home. I changed my name on the socials 13 years ago and I experience euphoria every time someone calls me Ms Lake.

Then, when I moved to Thailand my friends gave me the nickname Lek and explained that Lek with an upward tone means Small, which is appropriate as I'm 148 cm tall. But, after two years here I realized that the upward tone in Lek เล็ก didn't *feel* exactly right. I was speaking my name as I had spoken it in English, Lake, Lake, Lake; I realized I was speaking my name with a low tone. Lek with a low tone means Steel in Thai. Yes, this is the way. Thailand is the fire that I'm forging myself within. เหล็ก

@Willow childhood memory of someone I met at summer camp

@Willow years ago we looked into names to use and had a hard time with it. one name kinda stuck with us though. we liked the meaning and it could be interpreted as somewhat gender neutral, being masculine in the original language, but more often read as feminine in current English. we still wanted another name and that one came to us in a dream where we used it along with the one that was floating in our head.
for a while we used those two names together. eventually though the former (that we picked as our second name) started to grate on us. we didn't like the ambiguity anymore and we had to realize that bring ambiguous and feminine leaning didn't really extend to German, the language we spoke with family and that we were immersed in. our father really drove this home. he made a point of specifically calling us this name to keep pretending we're his son. eventually it was enough. we decided we'll use the original feminine form of the name instead.
we ended up not using our old first name that came to us in a dream anymore eventually due to plurality reasons, but the second stuck: Alexia.

@Willow sometimes we think we should have kept both names cause plurality is a fuck as far as identifying with names goes anyway. but people were also even worse with saying it correctly.

@Willow I scrolled past the list of names of a crowded trans discord server for inspiration, and amy seemed nice

@Willow I don't have a story. I just always liked the name and chose it for myself almost 25 years ago, when I was 14 or so.

@Willow

I tried out a few names including going by my middle name but nothing stuck

I liked the name Olivia with its ending 'ah' ending but wanted something shorter. I then remembered Eliza Doolittle from my favourite musical and the chat bot ELIZA and it felt right

@Willow I think I always knew my name deep down even if it was hidden from me for most of my life. When I thought about what my name would be, I just knew it was Ciara, it just felt right ‍️

@Willow It was pretty simple for me. I wanted a name that a native French speaker could have while not sounding totally awful in English. (I also wanted a name that had a common/easy diminutive but that dropped real fast) Charlotte stuck out pretty fast as my only possibility as all the other options I was thinking about had someone close to me already named like that and I didn't want to "share" a name. I tried it out for like a month and the first time I had someone call me Charlotte orally, I had so much euphoria that I knew it was the one. One nice thing that I realized after the fact, is that I took the name of my late grandmother from my father side, the only one I didn't really have the chance to know.

@Willow When my egg finally cracked a voice in my head told me my name was Nicole 🥰

@Willow My story is well up the prosaic end: https://katyswain.me/about/journal/2023-11-16-1348

My name deliberately didn't have any meaning at first. Now quite a lot of people have never known me by any other name, others are getting the hang of it, and most of the above appear (against all odds) to quite like me.

So the significance of the name for me is that it's attached to somebody that people like. I could never have engineered anything more satisfying.

@lif3form @Willow

@Willow a long, long time ago I had a tragic set of incidents that nearly killed me. It helped me realize that I wanted to live (a nice change of pace) but I didn't know what to live for. My high school girlfriend put a book in my hands where the main character learns that the point of being alive is to love and be loved by others.

Ever since then, every time I've had a chance to name someone in my life, it's been a name from the book.

Naturally, I did the same for myself. And that's how my wonderful 17 year old cat and I are named after twin sisters.

@miriamrobern This is such a cool way to choose a name.