I'm out to my friends, family, professors, coworkers, and bosses. I've been on T for nearly a year and I'm very close to setting a date for top surgery. I feel like I'm getting along pretty well in my transition, but I am seriously struggling to choose a name.
I don't want to share a name with anyone I know, so standard and even a lot of distinct but familar names (like Anton) are out. I want a name who really reflects who I am, but I'm struggling to really figure out who I am, and obviously one or two names can't reflect everything about me, so I have to prioritize. Which is hard for me, because I cycle through things. I speak several languages, so sometimes I think I want a name that reflects one or two of them, but then it's fall/winter and the weather is perfect (for me) for spending a lot of time outside hiking and bouldering and camping and tracking animals (I don't hunt, I just like to track) and just experiencing the changing colors and the colder temperatures and the first snowfalls, and I think I want a nature name. But then it's blizzard season and I spend more time inside reading, and maybe I want to take a literary name. And then it's the holiday season and I was raised Catholic so I end up going to church with my family or Catholic friends fairly often, and even though I don't
believe in Christian teachings I really do enjoy being in church and doing church things and I think maybe a saint name, maybe a religious name, but it's also time for some pagan celebrations, which I like to participate in even though I'm not spiritual in a pagan sense either, so I think maybe a really old pre-Christian name would be good, and then it's spring and second semester starts and I get back into band which I've been doing for nine years and I think I should name myself for one of my favorite musicians or composers, and so on and so forth until I talk to my Russian friends and think about how much I love Russian and consider a Russian name and then it's fall again and I'm back to nature names, etc. Like I can find names to represent different parts of me, and at different times and in different situations different names feel good and right, but I've been name-hunting for three years and I've never found one that's me all the time, though I've tried a couple that I had faith in (they all failed me.)
And then there's the overarching concern that I'm being pretentious. That by picking any of the names I like I'm trying to make that one aspect of my life the center of my identity, that I'm trying to make myself out to be this rugged outdoorsman because I like the name Angus or this brilliant scholar because I like the name Ignatius, that by picking a distinct name I'm trying to be special or grandiose. Because naming yourself Michael doesn't say much about you except that you're a guy who probably lives in a predominantly English-speaking country and you like the name Michael, but naming yourself Konstantin says a lot.
And then there's the issue of heritage. I'm an American. I was born and raised in the US. My parents were born and raised in the US. Even my grandparents were born and raised in the US. But my dad's side of the family is from Donegal, Ireland, if you trace back far enough, and my mom's side of the family is from two different places in Sweden, much much more recently than my dad's side. My mom grew up in a small town of predominantly Swedish descent; her church was Swedish Covenant Lutheran, they celebrated Saint Lucia's day, they ate Swedish food, even though my mom's given name was pretty universal she went to school with people with names like Börje Lundqvist. Most of my extended family on my mom's side lives in or around that town, but my mom left. We live in a big city more than 12 hours away. My mom doesn't cook, so the only times I've had Swedish food was once a year until I was eleven that we would go visit our family where my mom grew up (and when I was in high school and I got interested in cooking Swedish food, my mom would get angry and not let me because she hates the smell of cooking.) The only Swedish I knew until about a year ago was a prayer I learned from my grandma. I've never gotten to really celebrate St. Lucia's day, just heard about it a couple weeks later because that's when we'd visit. My mom, and by extension my siblings and I, are completely Americanized.
But I don't want to be, because I don't consider myself just American. Because my heritage is important to me, and I want desperately to be connected to it the way my cousins and aunts and uncles are.
And the fact that my mom's family is Swedish isn't going to change throughout the year like my hobbies do. So I think, perhaps a Swedish name? But I know for a fact my immediate family would disapprove, think it was silly or even (to my mom) offensive. And what claim do I, an American and americanized college student, have to a Swedish name? As much as I wish I wasn't, I'm disconnected from Swedish culture. When I cook Swedish food for myself, when I practice speaking Swedish on my own, when I try to celebrate St. Lucia's day by myself, I'm not participating in a culture that was passed down through generations in my family, I'm just cooking or learning a new language or celebrating a holiday. Or at least that's what the sad angry voices on the back of my head keep telling me, no matter how much I wish the latter was true. And it is important to me, because I'm an advocate against cultural appropriation, but I don't know how I fit into cultural reclamation. Obviously a group of people who have been forcibly removed from their traditional culture (or had elements of their culture de-ethnicized) has the right to reclaim it, and I'd say a person living in a country who's disconnected from more traditional elements of their country's heritage because of their more urban setting has a right to reclamation, but do I? I don't live in Sweden. Is being half-Swedish by blood enough for me to be able to decide to practice as much of Swedish culture as I can, including using a distinctly Swedish name? Or am I just a pretentious American who's trying to come off as more special and cultured than I really am?
And I know Latin and Russian, and I've been studying them for a long time and they're both important to me. I'm planning on pursuing a career with Russian, and "Latin student" was a huge part of my identity in junior high and high school. All my friends who weren't from band were from Latin; I did competitions, I read book after book after book about Roman history and culture. Latin's not even a spoken language, but you can bet my friends and I spoke it to each other. Even though I'm not currently studying it, the Latin language and ancient Rome are hugely significant to me. And Russian is, of course, also very important. I speak the language, I read about the history, I keep up with politics both modern and historical, I lived in the greater St. Petersburg area for a few months and Irkutsk for a year and a half and would love to end up there permanently. The Roman and Russian names I like are not devoid of context. I don't just like them because they're pretty. But I have no Southern European heritage at all, let alone Italian. I had no ancestors in Ancient Rome. And I have no heritage connection to Russia either. So I think of course it would be appropriative of me to use a distinctly Roman or Russian name. But then there's annoyingly hopeful voice in the back of my head that says it's okay because I do have some connection to them, even if it's not heritage. But then I think how weird it would be if I went with a Russian name and when people asked if I was Russian I just said "no but I really like it." and with the Roman names that aren't popular enough for me to already know people with them and that don't just sound Italian, they sound incredibly scholarly, and I'm not.
And my last name. I feel no connection to my last name, because my dad is estranged from his family, so it holds no significance as a family name to me. I've always identified more with my mom's maiden name, because I actually know and interact with my mom's family. ______son holds more meaning as a family identifier to me than O'________. But my parents are going to divorce once my youngest sister finished high school, and my mom is going to change back to her maiden name. And though I'm closer to my mom's family than my dad's, I'm much closer to my dad than my mom. So I feel like taking her name would be a slap in the face for him, which I don't want. But I want to love my name, because I think names are so cool and important and wonderful and even before I knew I was trans I was fascinated with names and wanted to change mine to something I actually felt represented me. I've never liked any part of my name. So I think, maybe the Swedish equivalent of my current last name? But then it feels once again like maybe I'm just being pretentious, like it's silly of me to just choose a completely new last name, especially one of a distinct origin that's clearly different from my current one. And maybe it would hurt my dad if I change my last name at all, I don't know.
I just don't know. I don't know what to do. This is so much longer and more rambling than I originally was planning on it being, and it went in a direction I wasn't expecting. I'm sorry, I really am, but please help me untangle this. I want a name that really reflects my identity, a name that feels personal to me and not one-size-fits all, but I just don't know who I am or who I could potentially be. I don't want to be pretentious, I don't want to come off as try-hard, I don't want people to make snide comments about my name change behind my back, I don't want to offend my family, but I want something that's
me and I feel like I just can't find a name that's everything I need it to be.
