So many of us transwomen choose a woman’s name very close to our birth name. I know some of us have monogrammed bathroom towels or table napkins and we don’t want to throw them out. Seriously, though, in my opinion the name you use may shape how others respond to you.
I say that because your name is not only for your benefit. Your name is also for the people around you, for your friends, for your coworkers, for your family. If you ask them to use a name that is very close to the name given you at birth, you might make it harder for them to change how they relate to you.
My birth name was John, so I started trying out in my head various feminine variants of John: Jane, Joan, Jean. None of them sounded right to me. Since I didn’t have any monogrammed towels, I started looking around for other names. I liked the Frank Sinatra song, “Nancy (With the Laughing Face)”, and I decided to choose “Nancy” for my name. I actually used that name for about 30 years, starting in 1973. No one would ever mistake “Nancy” for “John”!
Around age four, my mother told me my name was supposed to be Kathleen (Chapter 1 in my memoir). How and when I exchanged “Nancy” for “Kathleen” is described in Chapter 11.
There are two ways you can confuse people with your new name:
- Keeping the spelling the same as your birth name but asking them to pronounce it differently;
- Changing the spelling to a variant that sounds the same as the birth name.
I know a transwoman who used option 1. It was so confusing for her coworkers that her employer asked her to change the spelling.
I also know a couple of transwomen who used option 2. One of them used the feminine version that is pronounced the same as the male version; for example, “Aaron” to “Erin”. Another used an unusual spelling variation of her male name. The problem with this option is that when people are talking to you, or talking about you, there is no speech bubble above anyone’s head. They are hearing the sound of your dead name, and it reminds them of who you used to be.
Instead I invite you to consider using one of the many distinctly feminine names like Amanda or Margaret or Lydia. Transmen might want a masculine name without a common feminine counterpart: Matthew, Wayne, or Scott.
Or, if you’re non-binary and you don’t want people to prejudge your gender, then choose a name that is indeterminate, like Taylor or Kerry or Chris.
I leave you with this thought: when you change your gender, you want people to see you differently. Why not make it easier for them?
Is your new name very close to your birth name? Please tell me in the Comments why you did so and how that has worked for you. Please subscribe, too, so you don’t miss any posts.
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