How did you choose your name?
I put a tremendous amount of thought into the name I choose for myself to make sure it fits both me and my personality. I narrowed down my choices to four names before settling on Melissa. My short list included Aubrey, Victoria, Brittney and Melissa. All very feminine names which was something I wanted.
I listed all the characteristics and personality traits for people with each one of the names. I asked my friends which list fit me best without giving them the name. Everyone of my friends said the list for Melissa fit me best.
The following are the list of characteristics and traits of people with the name Melissa. Do you still feel they fit me?
-You have psychic power.
-You can carry on for others with joy.
-You have a receptive nature and may bear burdens for others.
-You are pragmatic, thorough, strong-willed, practical and stubborn at times.
-You are hard working, often martyr to duty.
-You like home and security above all.
-You have an eventful, exciting life.
-You are versatile and have the ability to learn easily.
-You find the best contentment in life when you own your own home and provide well for your family and loved ones.
-You have a great sense of responsibility and duty. You are comforting, appreciative and affectionate.
-Your obligation in life is to hold justice and truth, and if you follow the Law, you can find the great happiness and satisfaction.
-a clever mind.
-good business judgment
-a sense of responsibility and an appreciation of the finer things of life.
-Whatever you set out to accomplish you do your very best to complete in accordance with what you consider to be right.
-In the home you assume your responsibilities capably, having the self-confidence to form your own opinions and make your own decisions.
-Others can rely on you; once you have given your word you will do your utmost to fulfill a responsibility.
-However, there is a tendency to be a little too independent in your thinking and it is difficult for you to accept the help of others when you should.
-Due to your strong sense of responsibility, you could experience worry and mental turmoil through assuming more responsibility than you should.
Then once I read the meaning of the name Melissa my mind was made up.
Melissa is a Greek name.
In Greek, it means "honey bee."
In Persian, it means "red rose."
The feminine version of "Melisseus", legendary "King of Crete."
In mythology, it is the name of a princess of Crete who was TRANSFORMED into a bee after she learned to collect honey.
Hi Melissa Ann
Wow you really put some yards into deciding. I asked my mother (before she knew I was trans) what she would have named me" if" I was "born a girl". I would have been called Elizabeth if they had realised I was a girl, which is a name I don't mind at all. My closest girlfriend's name is also Elizabeth and wasn't sure how that would sit with her...so I considered a couple of other names for a few more days.
I was talking to my wife and asked her what name she like and she said to me(not knowing my online name)I hate Sarah....OK...So I asked what she did like again and she said "I quite like Elizabeth" I was floored....
So I was talking to my girlfriend last week and finally mentioned I was choosing a name and she asked what my mother was going to call me, when I told her Elizabeth (her name as well) she leapt off the deep end into a 10 minute rant about why I SHOULD call myself Elizabeth, the number of derivatives from it, the wonderful people called it and so on and so on...
My new real world name is Elizabeth and I love it. If I could work out a way to change it here I would. I may just have to keep Sarah for awhile longer
Sarah T,
Elizabeth K, Libby K, Liz K (K is my real world last initial)
Hi Sarahtokes(Elizabeth)
I love to see these stories on how people picked their names. I'm so glad your friend was on board with you real world name. I like it too and was on my list but didn't make the cut.
I don't remember how I picked this one in 1992 but it just seemed right to me. The interesting thing I found when doing some genealogy was a g-g-g etc. grandmother from the 16th century with the same first and middle name, Deborah Anne.
I'm not sure whether that's creepy or fate but it somehow made me happy.
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In my case, Beverly was supposed to be the given name of the first girl in the family. It's just that my parents never knew they had a girl. So Beverly it is. Girls in my mom's family were never given middle names for some reason so in choosing one I picked the middle name of my best friend and the person who has shared this with me for 46 years. My wife.
Quote from: sarahtokes on December 26, 2015, 04:39:34 PM
Hi Melissa Ann
Wow you really put some yards into deciding. I asked my mother (before she knew I was trans) what she would have named me" if" I was "born a girl". I would have been called Elizabeth if they had realised I was a girl, which is a name I don't mind at all. My closest girlfriend's name is also Elizabeth and wasn't sure how that would sit with her...so I considered a couple of other names for a few more days.
I was talking to my wife and asked her what name she like and she said to me(not knowing my online name)I hate Sarah....OK...So I asked what she did like again and she said "I quite like Elizabeth" I was floored....
So I was talking to my girlfriend last week and finally mentioned I was choosing a name and she asked what my mother was going to call me, when I told her Elizabeth (her name as well) she leapt off the deep end into a 10 minute rant about why I SHOULD call myself Elizabeth, the number of derivatives from it, the wonderful people called it and so on and so on...
My new real world name is Elizabeth and I love it. If I could work out a way to change it here I would. I may just have to keep Sarah for awhile longer
Sarah T,
Elizabeth K, Libby K, Liz K (K is my real world last initial)
Use the members link in the upper right had corner of the screen to see if it's used. Come up with an alternate just in case because sometimes the names don't show. Once you have a name, let a moderator know and we will change it as soon as we can. It's pretty simple for us to do but you are limited to two name changes a year.
My birth name is Alex, so I chose Alexa to feminize it more.
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I like to say my name chose me. Kate, entered my life either back in June of 2008 or 2009. I know it was really early on when I was starting to talk to who became my wife. And for the first year we were together I would interchangeably go back and forth between my birth name and Kate.
As I have written how I gained my name was an eventful, fated accidental phone call in the night. My dream that night had me dubbed Kate through it.
Kate <3
Had some friends when I was middle aged teen that were a lesbian couple. We used to hang out all the time and I had a lot of feminine mannerisms so they finally decided that, well...
Friend: "You're just like a chic!"
Me: "Really? There is something to that actually."
*brief explanation of who I am ensues*
Friends: "Oh, that is cool! Well, you need a girl name if you are going to be a girl..."
From there we started a search through a baby name book...but nothing really spoke to us so we started thinking of names that were familiar to us. When I was very little, a family friend used to dress me up and do my hair. I was like 4, but I can still remember how it felt so natural and awesome.
When I said her name, Katie...it was an instant fit and so I became Kaity...cuz I spell weird.
So, there it is. I have now carried and answered to two names for over 35 years. I started looking in to the formal in the late 90's when it became obvious that my course was going to be full transition at some point. So, my full name is Katherine Lynn M. with my friends always calling me Kait or Kaity.
I too love hearing about how our chosen names came to be ours and how we have come to truly own and encompass them as we grow.
It might sound bizarre but it was somewhere in my head. I am not really sure where I got the name from but I had been carrying it around with me for years. I tried a couple of others but they didn't seem to be me and so Rebecca it is.
Hi All
My mother was going to name me Lyndsey Marie when I was born, little did she know it happened many years latter. I always like the name anyway
hugs
I've always been Teresa Cheryl,my wife prefers Cheryl,so I use my middle name these days so to make her happy.
Still looking for a name but right now I'm leaning towards Daphne also considering Audrey Bethany Danielle or Melody would love some input and suggestions
Names go through fads and cycles in popularity. If you pick a name that's popular right now, it may seem funny as applied to a woman born several decades before the name became popular.
My birth name was Andrew, which comes from the greek word meaning "manly." Isn't that a laugh riot! While I was in high school, most people considered me to be a gay boy. That made sense according to the way people understood gender identity at the time. I was a slender, somewhat swishy boy who sometimes wore eye makeup or girly clothes. I was mostly attracted to boys, except for the biggest crush of my life, a lesbian two years older than me. (But she's a whole 'nother story!) So the conclusion that I was gay was reasonable, even though I knew even back then that there was more going on inside me.
In college, I sorted out a lot of my feelings and came to understand myself as m to f trans. Like a lot of us, I assumed an internal name that corresponded to my gender identity. I wanted to stay with an "A" name. Thinking back over my school years, I remembered that there would often be girls named April in my classes, so that's what I chose. I didn't want some exotic name; I wanted a name that might well have been given to me at the time if I had been born a girl.
The Social Security Administration (which maintains records on the names and birth dates of hundreds of millions of people) compiles year-by-year lists of the frequency of names parents give to newborn boys and girls. For 1981, April was the 25th most common name for girls (pretty high up on the list), which is why I often ran into girls named April during my school years. By the way, "manly" Andrew was the 18th most common name for boys that same year.
So I adopted April as my internal name about 15 years ago, and the name started gradually coming out in the open as my gender identity began to unfold. I was sometimes socializing and dating crossdressed, going by April when I did that. As I started serious transition efforts, I legally changed my name and brought my documents into line with my new reality.
So I'm April now, and "manly" Andrew is just history.
A recommendation: If you're thinking about adopting a new name, check the Social Security records on name frequency and you can see how likely such a name was in various years. If your ultimate objective is to blend in seamlessly into a female identity, it makes sense that you would use a name people would naturally associate with a woman of your age. It works for me!
Thanks love! I love the name April so pretty. I just checked and Daphne was the 692 most popular girl's name the year I was born lol. Danielle and Bethany were both in the top 100. I guess I just have to see what name truly fits.