Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Since you came out how many names did you go by before you picked the one?

Only once, but it was well thought out before I had it changed.

Quote from: Lady Sarah on January 24, 2018, 09:31:52 PM
Only once, but it was well thought out before I had it changed.

Did you go by different names before you had it legally changed?

Quote from: KarlMars on January 24, 2018, 10:25:57 PM
Did you go by different names before you had it legally changed?

Only during my life of crime - does that count?

ok I have had Jessica, Jessica james, JJ, Christina, Ashely, and Now Natalie Ashlyne Brooke is filed as my legal name
                               

Quote from: natalie.ashlyne on January 24, 2018, 10:47:11 PM
ok I have had Jessica, Jessica james, JJ, Christina, Ashely, and Now Natalie Ashlyne Brooke is filed as my legal name
                             

I like Natalie.

Quote from: KarlMars on January 24, 2018, 10:48:26 PM
I like Natalie.

Thank you it is the female version of my male name My mom told me when I was 5 or 6 that is what she would have called me if I was born a girl It means a gift from god so I went with it.

Quote from: KarlMars on January 24, 2018, 10:25:57 PM
Did you go by different names before you had it legally changed?

My mother named me after my father. My adoptive parents gave me another name. From the moment I went full time, I have only used Sarah Kimberly Frost.

I first tried: Jasmine, then eventually settled on Tamara.

I'm glad I sorted that out before the name change documents were filled out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When I first joined Susan's Place I was CalDudette, a variation of CalDude with a fem sound.  Then shorten it to Cali. 

Finally came up with Cassi as I'm a Greek goddess!

I fist tried the female version of my male name. I liked it, but after some time I felt like I needed a drastical change. That name carried too many negative memories and emotions. I settled for Lisandra. I love it, but maybe a more androginous name would have fit me better. Something like Ariel. I love Gabrielle, but in my country it's exclusively male.

Two. But I only told about three people about the first one, then I had to explain why it suddenly wasn't useable and changed it again.

I'm not out but twice from old guy name to Kathy the next realised I hated Kathy haha so I chose Katie which is a girl's name I have ALWAYS liked

Only once. I didn't try different names. My boy name was Julian and changing to Julia made it a lot easier for my family to switch rather than trying to get used to an entirely new name.

Quote from: Julia1996 on January 26, 2018, 07:52:31 AM
Only once. I didn't try different names. My boy name was Julian and changing to Julia made it a lot easier for my family to switch rather than trying to get used to an entirely new name.

Aha!  So, you "N'd" yourself :)

My petition for name change was filed this morning, and I'm sitting here, polling the court's website every 5-10 minutes to see if the judge has signed and filed the order yet.

The first name I chose was the one I use here, and every other trans place I go on the web. I chose it for what may seem a silly reason, but I think it was really sweet  :)  I got where I am via gender euphoria, not dysphoria; and my first over-the-top, skyrockets-in-flight experience of that came from thinking, "If I were a woman, what woman would I want to be?" and I didn't even have to think; the answer was there. I wanted to be Ann Marie from television's "That Girl." You may think I'm weird; but that character is me: repressed me, girl me ... she is so much me that when I would look at her picture it felt like I was looking in a mirror.

Nevertheless, after a few months, I changed my mind. I kept the "Ann," though. It's my middle name, now, and the one I go by IRL. My new first name is rather unusual, and easily mangled; so I keep it as my special treasure.

Anyone who wants to help me choose a name:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,233433.0.html

During transition I actually thought long and hard about names like Victoria or Kimberly. Ultimately I went with Margaret (I go by Maggie), because it's very similar in ancestry to my birth name, and the letters in my old name make up a part of it - making it easy to explain it away as an old nickname.

Plus I really like my name now.

I have legally changed my name twice, but the first time was to a gender neutral name I didn't particularly want cause it wasn't legal to change to a name of the opposite sex in my country back then. So, it was common practice for trans people to first change to a gender neutral name at the beginning of transition and then change to their preferred name of the opposite sex once they got the legal gender marker changed at the end of transition, which also required for them to get sterilised.

And that's what I thought I had to do as well. But, as luck would have it for me, the name law was changed in the beginning of my transition (September 2009) and I could change to the male name I wanted just a few months later while still legally female! But if I had just waited a bit for that law to be changed, I wouldn't have wasted time and effort on that first name change, but at least it was for free. The second name change costed money, but it would have either way.

But legal technicalities aside, I have not changed what name I want to go by once I had made my decision. The gender neutral name I went by legally for a few months was Joan, because it was what was closest to the name I actually wanted but couldn't legally change to until later, which was John. It's the name I thought of when I was 15 and had just figured out I'm trans before I went back into the closet again.

But at that age, I couldn't decide between the names Izack and John. It wasn't until I was 19 and contemplated coming out as trans that I ultimately picked John cause it sounded better (a friend of mine jokingly told me that Izack sounded like "I suck") and easier to spell.

Although recently I've been wanting to maybe change it to Lamont, but it's too late now. I've had the name John for 9 years now (8,5 years legally) and everyone has finally gotten used to using it for/about me. So I feel like it would be unnecessarily obnoxious of me to change my name again now. So I'm likely gonna stick with John. I just wish I had thought of Lamont sooner. Cause I think it sounds so awesome and would look/sound really good together with my surname which also starts with "La" and cause it's not a Christian name. But woe is me, I guess! ::)

There is no male version of my birthname though, which is Sara. Closest would be Sam or the more unusual Saar, I guess? So that wasn't really an option for me. Though I did take one of my father's middle names for myself additionally to John, cause I used to have my mother's middle name additionally to Sara. Also, my parents had no male name intended for me prior to my birth. They were deadset on getting a daughter. Well, they did and they didn't.

I wore a few that my now exwife was the only one to know about.....and people on ESO.  I wore them as character names, but they mostly just used my xbox live account name.  The one that hung around the longest is my Susan's Place name.  The name that felt the most real was Claire, and I like wearing it.  As a gamer, changing names was very easy, making the change in real life, not so much.  Throughout my life I've worn hundred's of names, some very male, some very female, it depended on what I was doing and who I was with.  My pen and paper RPG's were a fairly even mix of male and female, my video RPG's were all female, and my LARP characters were all male.  This was done due to the necessity of hiding my true self from those around me.

Quote from: Artesia on April 30, 2018, 09:36:08 AM
Throughout my life I've worn hundred's of names, some very male, some very female, it depended on what I was doing and who I was with.

I get that - I used to play LOTS of Text based games online where you could create your character however you wanted.  I created a few male characters at first (when I was a young teenager) but then I made the switch to female characters and it felt so right.
IRL, I first started with "Brandy" as my new name, but after about six months I switched to Ashley, because that was the name my parents had picked out when I was a baby.  Changed it about a month later to Ashlynn (with Ash & Ashley as nicknames) for several reasons, one being that my mother's middle name is Lynn and I liked how the name sounded.
~Ashlynn

Carly because I would have been named Caroline, then Lyra because I just liked it, then back to Carly, and now I prefer Caroline in full, but still like Carly just as well.

I also have a pseudonym I use for various things: Evelyn English.

Only once.  I picked Kathy Lauren when I first joined Susan's Place.  After using it for more than a year here, I realized that I liked it a lot.  So my legal name is now Kathleen Lauren Walker.

Quote from: KathyLauren on April 30, 2018, 04:23:21 PM
Only once.  I picked Kathy Lauren when I first joined Susan's Place.  After using it for more than a year here, I realized that I liked it a lot.  So my legal name is now Kathleen Lauren Walker.

Like others have replied on here.... I changed my name ONLY ONCE... from my past male name to my present female name.
In my opinion any more than that unless the other name was very unsuitable can usually be a nightmare of confusion for yourself and for everyone and everything else.
I always advise those that are considering changing their name to be very wise, prudent and rational....   fad names and weird names usually don't work well for a lot of reasons.
Danielle

When I joined these forums way back when I went by a different name, Victoria/Tori. I had met someone whose name was Victoria and she went by 'Tori' as a nickname and I really liked it, and at the time I was trying to distance myself from my name that I would have been given had I been born biologically female. That's a long story.

A couple of years after joining, I was no longer doing that as much. I came out to my ex-girlfriend (who was just a best friend at the time). She had a close friend from her hometown with my name, so I changed it slightly to a variation. I went by that for years, but typically acknowledged that it was a variation of my actual name. Last year or the year before I finally renounced it because my ex left my life.

I started out as Misty and my wife hated it. She offered a suggestion of Darlene or Donna. I fell in love with Donna and I picked Ashley as a middle name. It keeps my initials the same and they are going on my government name change forms

Cool post! Well it's hard to pin point when I used the name Ashley, I recall as a young child I was very curious about what I would have been called void of my birth defect and my parents informed me it would have been Ashley! Back when I was in closet I made secret Accounts on Facebook and olaces such as that under Ashley Parker. So in my childhood to early 2013 whenever I dreamed of my true self it was Ashley, then in at some point I chose the name Chloe. Not sure why I thought it was cute and independent inguess? This name I self assumed from early 2013 or so, and used when I first came out 4 years ago. I used this name until August 2015 when I realized that Ashley seemed more fitting and natural for me, after all had I been born properly I would have been known as that for my whole life.

I haven't changed my name legally yet ever but I plan to. But I've gone through so many names.. I still don't really know which I want to go with.

Sent from my VS501 using Tapatalk

So I have been Nikkianne since I took my first faltering girly steps some 15 to 20 years ago when I thought I was just a cross dresser.

Since then I have tumbled towards femininity and I now find myself on HRT and closer to transition.   Always loved Nikki(Anne) but now find that I am seriously considering the female version of my natal name - Adrienne.

I have always liked my name but am reluctant to let go of Nikki as we have had some many adventures together.    Maybe Adrienne Nikki !

Nikki

I was a one and only name change. I thought about a feminine version of my old male name, I was Phillip Anthony and thought about Phyllis and a feminine version of the middle name, that lasted an eighth of a second. My partner and I went over names and we decided Margaret was a good first name, she insisted on the middle name Elizabeth (family tradition for women in her family) So the day I started HRT Phillip went goodbye. He is now reincarnated as a standard poodle... Fun times with that one :)   

I've been Ryuichi since Spring of 2004 when I was nicknamed that by a group of friends.  When I decided to transition, I've been called Ryu or Ryuichi for so long, my birth name didn't seem to be mine anymore.  Which is fine, because even though it is a lovely name, its not my name.  I never felt it belonged to me, I only borrowed it until my male name was found.

So, I have the old group of anime friends I used to hang out with to thank for my legal name.  :D

Ryuichi

My parents called me Jimmy. I picked up the nickname, Jenny, sometime in elementary school. This was used in a derogatory sense by kids who thought i was overly effeminate. But I kinda liked it. The first few jobs i held, as a teenager, I went by Jenny, then they started asking for I.D. in the hiring process, so I had to use my legal (boy) name on job applications. I then decided I liked 'Susan' because it just sounds so feminine. I had my legal name change done in the late 1980's. My middle name (Anne) was my grandmothers first name.