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’ve always had a list of names I liked for several purposes but when I heard the name I chose for myself, I became completely obsessed with it and was sad it wasn’t my name. But then I realized there was no reason it couldn’t be XD

My original name has no male counterpart, so I nerded to forge something anew.

I made a large list of names of my language whose letter started with A (same letter as my old name), didn’t have a female counterpart and I liked the pronounciation. Then I risked off the names that only very old people used, which were 75% of the list. The remaining list was about eight names. “Abel” was the most common of them.

I noticed afterwards that my parents (if they weren’t transphobic cucks) would have liked this name. When I asked them how they picked my name, they said that they wanted it to start with A, be simple to write, short, with no variant spellings, beautiful, with a good meaning and not too common. Also, they’re christians.

I wanted a science-based name because I’m a little nerd lol. I considered Kelvin at some point. In the end, (and I really can’t remember why I specifically chose it) I named myself after Edmond Halley – Hal as a nickname, as a reference to HAL 9000 of course.

Honestly, I sort of regret it, because Halley isn’t as gender neutral as I thought and everyone considers it a girl name. I wish I’d been more out there and straight up decided to call myself Truck or Brick or something.

Cis, just didn’t like my birth name because I don’t like the sound of it. Weirdly enough I’m fine hearing it said if you aren’t speaking to or about me. If you’re talking to or about someone else named [my birth name] it doesn’t bother me to hear the name at all.

Found my new name by going through baby name websites and writing down every name for girls that I liked. (I prefer to be very gender-conforming in my outward presentation and want my name to be so as well.) It was a very long list. Over time, I culled names from the list and ended up with two final choices. I forget how I decided between them, but what I can say is that during the entire process, I picked names based on how they sounded to me. After all, my grievance with my birth name is how it irritates me to hear it. I did not look up the meanings behind the names. They can be interesting, but my birth name had a perfectly fine meaning and that did nothing to endear me to it.

I just kept the name I had. Why do I need a new one?

I didn’t really sit down and choose a name, it was given to me. Some friends started calling me by a shorter version of my deadname and I really liked the vibe of it, so I started going by it.

They’re all derivative names. My first/middle names are gender-neutral, though I use the original spelling (which implies masc).

I won’t go into detail since it’s generally not a good idea to share full names on the internet with strangers, but when I was a kid I looked up my birthname, and the meaning of my first name was “the (opposing) version of [Name]” (eg “Francine is the feminine of Frank”).

The irony of the original name was that its meaning was ‘very gender’ (eg: if Frank were to mean “buff and hairy”), so it was confusing if the opposing version’s meaning changed in any way. I took a shine to it when I was a kid, then I used the original name and its most common spelling as my new first name as an adult.

I had a character in a story I wrote but never published that I’ve gone back to several times, originally named Sol for some in-universe reasons but I eventually changed it for other reasons. (Sorry for being vague, it wasn’t a great story.) I still liked the name Sol, though, and eventually decided that I wanted to adopt it. I ended up going with Soleil (pronounced So-lay) because I like how it sounds.

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.

I stole my name from my kindergarten girlfriend lol

I’m non-binary. My first and last names are fine. First name leans gendered but is technically unisex. I’m in the process of changing my middle name from a generic gendered one to either “Moxie” or “Miles”. This is because

• I don’t want to have to change my initials (smh)
• I feel no affinity towards my middle name
• Miles is best Sonic the Hedgehog character
• Moxie is best soda
• My middle name appears on few documents but my initial appears on many, so fewer things to update.

(Feel free to suggest other less gendered middle names that start with “M” or try to persuade me one way or another)

I made a list of names I’ve always liked and found I kept coming back to one in particular, so that had to be it.