People who traverse the gender spectrum face something most people won’t even consider; if you drastically change your presentation as a person - do you also change your name? If you’re assigned female at birth but are transitioning towards being male, will you be able to feel comfortable with the name you were given at birth? Most names are gendered, so the odds of them meshing with a changing gender expression are probably against you.
That said, some people have androgynous names - names that are traditionally given to both men and women. Technically, my old name - Lowe - is one of those. I’ve never felt that way though, and the only woman I’ve met that had that name later turned out to be a trans man, so… yeah.
Speaking of old names…
The name that once was
In trans circles, the term deadname is used to refer to one’s old name. The term is named from two things; in contrast to the term birthname, and the fact that the name is now dead and should not be used.
The action of deadnaming someone is to call them by their old name, and it is considered greatly offensive to deliberately deadname someone. People suffering from gender dysphoria1 this can cause a wide range of negative feelings from mild annoyance to great discomfort.
That said, the harm is mostly felt when it’s deliberate. Different people will of course react differently depending on their own situation, but from the trans people I have spoken to this about and from my own perspective, being deadnamed is neither fun nor the end of the world. Especially when it comes to people close to you that have known you for a long time. It’s understandably a bit of a challenge to change how you refer to someone you’ve known for decades.
Hell, it’s easy to do it to yourself at times. It’s only once you change your name you realize how some habits are subconsciously stuck very deep. Things like shaking hands with someone and introducing yourself will probably make you say… your old name. Same with if you’re cooking and your phone starts ringing and you answer it while stirring a pot or something - it’s very easy to use your old name. Does that mean I’m not committed to the name Olivia? Of course not. It’s just part of the experience of transitioning, and much of that takes a lot of time and effort before it becomes subconscious.
As such, at least to me it’s not a major deal if you call me by my deadname, especially not now that I’m fairly early into my transition. If you keep doing it in a few years time though, I might be a bit “come on really”, but right now I’ll just politely correct you and we’ll go on just fine. Please don’t worry about it.
If you want to take anything away from this, let that be that if someone tells them that they have a new name it’s a baseline of respect to try to use that name.
How to choose a name
(credit to CandyCore Comics)
Choosing a new name is fun, but also kinda… scary. You want to get it correct right away, right? So, how do you go about it? Do you base it on your old name? Do you use the same first letter, so that your initials are the same? Can you find one that sounds kinda similar phonetically, so that there’s some resemblance? Or, do you go buck wild and invent a new name no one has ever had before?
You’ll probably notice a theme in my writings about these things, but… this is personal and will greatly vary from person to person. This is my story about it, so…
What about my name?
When I first came out, I had a different name in mind then the one I actually settled on. As I mentioned earlier - you feel like you want to get it right, but you honestly might not.
I had two candidates for names for myself, and they came from something related but a bit different. They were both names I would’ve wanted to give to my daughters. Not only did I only ever conceive having anything but daughters (i.e. I have no idea what I would name a son), but I’ve never been sure if I want children or not. I’m still not, and I’m leaning towards not2. But still, I had this really strong connection to these two names. If this is a hint towards me being trans or not, who knows?
The first name - Zoey
Anyway, when I first came out I named myself Zoey. It means “life”. Following the earlier discussion about how to choose a name, it’s phonetically similar to my old name. During spring of this year I experimented a bit with it, mostly by choosing it as nicknames in online games. Due to the pandemic we played a lot of games like Jackbox where we’d get to choose nicknames, and I choose Zoey (or just Zoe - I couldn’t choose).
But, even though I’ve really liked that name since I first saw it on a character in a snowboarding game many years ago, it didn’t feel right. Part of me liking it as my name was that it’s a name that people outside of Sweden can correctly pronounce - something that’s not true for my deadname. But, inversely, it does not feel at home as a Swedish name either. It felt almost artificial on me - it didn’t really fit.
The name I ended up choosing - Olivia
I was kind of ambivalent on choosing a name. It wasn’t really actively on my mind. More like on the back burner. Then, on my way back home from doing Högskoleprovet in May it just dawned on me. I had been so focused on Zoey that I forgot that I actually had two candidates for names.
And the other was of course, Olivia. Following the earlier discussion, it’s kind of based on my old name. oLewia, if you follow. It has connotations to peace, which I really resonate with.
I’ve legally changed it so that that’s my name. I currently have my deadname as a middle name, but I’m probably going to remove that. As of this writing I’m the only Olivia Thiderman there is, so to distinguish my name further seems superfluous. I considered Olivia Zoey Thiderman, of course, but I’m not really living for the initials that would give me, haha. Maybe I could go with something on H, like Hanna Olivia Thiderman so that my initials would be HOT? 🔥 I don’t know, and I’m not in a hurry to change it. Perhaps I’ll change my mind if I have another serendipitous moment, but for now I’m going to go with a less is more approach.
The internet nickname
Lastly, I’m at a crossroads about my internet nickname as well. For over a decade, I’ve just gone by the mononym of my last name - thiderman; it’s even the root domain for this blog. For a transfeminine person like myself, going by a nickname with the suffix -man feels ever so slightly off for hopefully understandable reasons. I figured the amount of times I’d be gendered correctly with that nickname could probably fit on a single hand.
I use Discord quite a bit, and on there they have a system where the username also has a 4-digit number attached to it, to allow multiple users to have (kind of) the same username. So, I wanted to change from thiderman to Olivia. And, that proved kinda difficult - perhaps not surprising given that it’s a given name that’s not entirely uncommon. I tried the obvious Olivia#6969 and Olivia#1337 et.c., but they were all taken. Nothing worked. I started trying random numbers. All taken. But, then I landed on one that actually worked, and I decided to adopt that as my main internet nickname.
So, now I’m Olivia 5000. That sounds like a potentially murderous sexbot in a Black Mirror episode, and I can absolutely live with that.
So what’s in a name?
Probably a lot more than you think! It’s one of those things that trans people will get to think a little bit more of than most, and I invite everyone else to think about names and the changing of them;
What if you suddenly had a reason to change your name? What would it feel like? What would you choose, and what would you find important when choosing? Giving those kinds of questions some thought is a small thing, but nevertheless it might give you an insight into a gender experience you might not be a part of.
That concludes my little internal monologue about names. I thought it would be worthwhile to share my experiences about names and the changing of them. I liked writing about it, and I’m pretty sure I can find more similar things to muse about. Turns out there’s a lot of things happening when one is trans, and there are stories to be told about those things. I’d love to tell mine.