Susan's Place Transgender Resources

This came to my mind because a friend of mine is looking for a name, since the way he's currently called reminds him too much of his birthname.

For me though, it's quiet the contrary, mentally I'm calling myself by a name very similar (same sound, lenght, first letter, although clearly other gender) as my birtname. That's why I'm curious how that was for you?

ainsley is no where near my dead name. :)

For me distinction between my birth name and real name was a must, but I think this wildly varies from person to person. For me my birth name is sorta a symbol of my oppression of who I am and trying to fit into a gender I just don't belong in.

I really don't think there is a right answer besides what is right for you.

I also changed my last name, due to very very conservative relatives that could cause issues (we're talking anti-vaccination advocates).

I go both by names alternately since the first was unisex. But I picked another different, but it was still one of the ones picked out for me by parents/grandparents, so it still feels close in a way.

My name is entirely different to my birth name. I hate my birth name. But that didn't have anything to do with the choice of my name now. It just is a thing, lol.

I'm not sure but I'm thinking I would just keep my name which is Jesse, what do y'all think?

My mom once told me that if I'd been born a girl she would have named me Jennifer.  So that's the name I chose.  No way similar to the name my parents gave me.

Quote from: MissJess3 on February 15, 2018, 02:48:43 PM
I'm not sure but I'm thinking I would just keep my name which is Jesse, what do y'all think?

Personally I think that's a great idea. Jesse is a cool name and it will really help people who knew you before.

I wanted to be sure nobody could guess my dead name, since I heard of people doing that in order to use it as an insult. Besides, I hated my dead name, and did not want it following me around.

Quote from: MissJess3 on February 15, 2018, 02:48:43 PM
I'm not sure but I'm thinking I would just keep my name which is Jesse, what do y'all think?

Sure, why not, if you like it.  I'd change the spelling, though, to Jessie.

Mine is similar to my birth name.

I'm not currently out with my family, but I've always thought that if I ever am (and my parents are supportive), I would like to let both of my parents pick a middle name for me. I feel like my birth name is a gift from them, even if I choose to move away from it to a name that is more fitting. I think I would like to continue carrying that gift with me in my male name. Alternately, my middle name that was given at birth came from my grandmother's name, so I might swap that with the masculine version of it (Antoinette to Antoine).

But that's just middle names, because I don't trust my parents THAT much.   :P

For my first name, I chose a name based on the first character I remember relating to as a kid in terms of female to male masculinity. Plus, I just like it.

The only similarity they have is that they both have Irish origins. 

My heritage is French, so no idea why I got the first one.  I just like Colleen and everyone I've met says it fits me perfectly so I'm rolling with it.

As an SO who was in on all the steps of her other' s transition I had the pleasure of giving her part of her first name. As we were going "out" from the beginning I tried to keep things as logistically easy as possible with the name. I used her initials to create a feminine name. She liked it and then added her nom de plume (which she started using on Susan's) to create a unique name that describes who she is. I think her name is as beautiful as she is. As her wife my only concern was that she keep her last name. For me that was a connection to our relationship that I did not want to loose. She did that for me and I love being Mrs. and Mrs. Smith.

Debi

I have no 'dead' name as Kelly is used for both genders. Very useful. Thanks Mum!

I definitely wanted something different. My dead name is what my abusers called me. I don't want to be reminded of it in my new life.

Quote from: krobinson103 on February 15, 2018, 06:50:28 PM
I have no 'dead' name as Kelly is used for both genders. Very useful. Thanks Mum!

Now that's just cheating!

I pick on that was similar to my birth name and has the same meaning to the name

Quote from: Colleen_definitely on February 15, 2018, 09:35:55 PM
Now that's just cheating!

Hey why not? :p I like my name the way it is.

I picked mine based on personality, available nicknames, how people might perceive me based on my name, and how unique it is. My mother gave me a name that can be shortened to sound masculine because she was worried about sexism on job applications. I dislike it BECAUSE it can also be feminized. I've also got a lot of bad memories attached to my given name so I decided to start fresh. I wanted something strictly masculine. I decide on Ignatius because in the US, it's uncommon and anyone who does have it isn't typically white. Going back to the whole job application discrimination, I don't want to work for a company that could discriminate based on names so I didn't want a name that white people would use. Plus, Ignatius just sounds cool!

Quote from: ainsley on February 15, 2018, 01:24:19 PM
ainsley is no where near my dead name. :)

Dead name sounds so much better than birth name

I purposely choose my name to be close to my given names. My thoughts are that my mom and dad picked my names and I wanted to honor that. So Erwin Paul became Erin Paula. My mom later told me that Paula would have been one of my names if I was born AFAB.

After receiving a copy of my father's original signed birth announcement to the city hall, and the corrected new birth certificate, I was glad I did. I now have a piece of history in my possession that reminded me of how happy my father must have been to announce the birth of his child.

In the Netherlands birth documents are handled different than in the USA.

       I am in the process of my legal name change and so Robert Bruce will soon be Roberta Susan  I am Bobbi to my friends already funny thing is when I was little I hated being Bobby now I choose Bobbi


     bobbisue :)

My birth name was Mittens (my parents were really hoping for a cat), and my new name is Kitchen, so other than a bit of a rhyme they are no where close to being similar.

Quote from: Igknight on February 15, 2018, 10:29:42 PM
Dead name sounds so much better than birth name

I understand why some like the term dead name better but it doesn't really fit for me.  A lot of history with my birth name and plenty of it good. 

As far as picking my new name, I probably would have gone with a feminized version but I don't know of one.  No female name held any significance so I figured it might help ease transition if I kept my initials the same.  My dad has called me TJ mostly anyway.  I picked Tonya because it was the T name I liked best that I did not know anyone with.  I've since met two others but they spell it different. 

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I used the term dead name a couple of times and it really didn't feel right.

My new name and and my old name are both:

1. fairly common
2. one syllable
3. start with the J sound
4. unmistakably gendered

Quote from: Igknight on February 15, 2018, 10:29:42 PM
I picked mine based on personality, available nicknames, how people might perceive me based on my name, and how unique it is. Plus, Ignatius just sounds cool!

And a kinship with Ignatius J. Reilly makes it even cooler!

I did consider just adding an "a" to the end of my name, for me and probably everyone else too, I accossciate names with people and in my head that's how those people are/look.
I know that's a bit silly so my birth name with an A at the end reminds me of my ex partners mother and I'm still a little bitter and sad about that break up.

Besides I've always liked Katie :D

Mine is a total departure. Different letters, different ethnicity, different religion. It's just someone I associate with bravery and wisdom.

I asked my dad what name he had picked for me if I'd been born female. I've been Jennifer since.

Two syllables, and start with same initial letter.  "Andrew" to "April."

In the process of choosing, I looked on the Social Security Administration website showing the most frequently given names for men and women by birth decade, and there it was.  Seemed like a good idea to have a name that would likely have been given to a girl born the year I was born.  I bypassed Amanda and Amber because there were just too many of them.  75,000 Aprils born during the 80s.  That's about right for me.

As you might guess, I'm a math/statistics nerd.

I also liked April because of its association with springtime.  A time of new beginnings.

Here's a link to the SSA popular name site if you're interested:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/decades/

It's funny looking back.  My folks named me Andrew.  "English form of the Greek name Ανδρεας (Andreas), which was derived from ανδρειος (andreios) 'manly, masculine.'"

Wow!  Were they ever WRONG!  LOL!

Lol, I went from the top 15 to #152 for the 1980s.

I just posted my first post here, and mentioned this because mine is essentially the same, just shortened. Sent my paperwork in today to change my name and literally kept what everyone calls me just legally don't want my full name. Samantha to Sam. Personally, just wanted to keep that part of me but totally understand changing it to something different!

I liked that my first and last names had the same first and last letter and the same number of syllables, and I had no desire to change my last name, so I picked a new first name that kept all of those things and also reflected my heritage in some way.  i am still deciding on a new middle name, which I want to be something that reflects me on a more personal level and sounds good when said with the name as a whole.  zero attachment to any aspect of the original middle name, so there will be nothing in common for that one.

I haven't actually chosen a name yet. My handle here is close to my current name Shane. I am not sure what I am going to do as far as names go but I am increasingly wanting to distance myself from my birth name. It's nice to see how/why others chose theirs.  :)

My third grade teacher called me shelly, I used to like it a lot. but it resembles my evil abusive step mothers name way to closely. We can't have that now. I settled on Sarah partly cause it was an option if I was born with the correct parts. Haven't changed anything legally yet but pretty sure ill stick with it.

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Quote from: Jennifer.Diamonds on February 16, 2018, 04:01:44 AM
I asked my dad what name he had picked for me if I'd been born female. I've been Jennifer since.

This is so beautiful dear. <3

As of right now, I think I'd just change my middle name to something feminine but with nearly the same pronunciation, like from John to Joan for example.

There's no masculine version of my birth name or even anything really close, so my new name had to be completely different no matter what. But, I want no connection to my birth name anyway, as I've never been a fan of it.

I picked my name that is similar to my birth name because I feel like I am still me and using the similar name would just remind me of who I am (personality and all the good memories).

I picked my name for a variation of reasons...
I wanted to keep my initials because my mother created them very purposefully for a very specific reason and I wanted to honor that.
Whenever I would play video games, I would play as a male and and name the character Dustin. Its the only thing I could ever come up with when I thought about if my name were a male name.
It's not a huge leap from Destiny (gosh, even typing that feels weird now), but enough to be different.
And I picked Seth after debating between that and Sebastian for a while. I finally decided that Dustin Seth sounded better and flowed better than Dustin Sebastian. Also, Seth just felt right. It rings true in my mind as "that's my name." After I decided on it, I started using it as my common name and haven't really gone by anything else since then.
Some of my friends still call me DW, which is what I've used since I was in middle school because I could never stand my name, but it doesn't bother me since it's still my initials.

Quote from: JinnieY on February 17, 2018, 08:46:55 PM
I picked my name that is similar to my birth name because I feel like I am still me and using the similar name would just remind me of who I am (personality and all the good memories).

At my core I still feel the same; when I talk about my past I will say pre transition; and it's kind of irritating to me when some trans people talk about their past and refer to their birth name, like they are two different people; I mean you're still the same person, so it was still you that experienced whatever you are sharing, right? And the dead name concept is not something I can relate to either, it just doesn't sound right to me, and puts out a lot of bad juju. 

My mom gave me a nickname when I was a small child, a derivative of the dead name that I hated, That name unofficially became my " legal " name. upon transition i went from  Lawrence to Laurie..... always liked that name ... but not the phobic abuse i  got as a kid .....  signature  stays the same

Mine was my late grandmother's name.


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My name is the female version of my birth name. I did not pick it however, I was going with Mikaela which is similar/same. BUT no one in my family could say it. No not that, hmmm...

Okay, it kinda happened like this. From a very early age I was different, apparently I didn't know that I was different but everyone else did. I have no memory of a time when my family didn't call me Michelle or Sissy. After the age of 8 or 9 it was not all of the time because I had learned to be what people expected of me. Before that time it was so bad that people that I just met sometimes assumed that my name was Michelle and my nick name was Sissy. I remember meeting my grandpa's family for the first time, I became instant friends with his cousin's granddaughter. We were playing and she kept calling me Sissy, I asked her not to I don't like that. She said I am sorry Michelle, why do your grandpa and uncle call you that then? Michelle never bothered me a bit so I didn't correct her. Anyway, Sissy faded, had to really I had been beat on so much I became the mongrel they couldn't kill that would never say uncle, Michelle never did though. Even when I finally got to know my younger brother more in my late teens he called me Michelle. My uncles, brothers, cousins all called me Michelle. My one uncle always sung that stupid "Michelle My Bell" song every time he saw me. To be honest I often wondered if my older brother forgot that I had another name. When I told everyone about me and said that I want to be called Mikaela from now on they said okay and kept calling me Michelle. Even the women now, so I asked my one aunt and she said, I am sorry, it's just the way I think of you. I gave up at that point. I didn't pick my name, I picked Mikaela almost in defiance of that name. I knew then that my name had always been Michelle, there could be no other.

I think it's funny when people say that I chose to transition, that being transsexual was a choice. From the beginning almost every choice I made was in the opposite direction. I chose to try to be normal, the memory of that stupid hospital always haunted me. After that I always chose against anything like transition, until the end when the only two options were death or transition. In the end I never had a choice, not even in my name.

Hahaha! How could I have forgotten?! I was just reminded that I had a Clark Kent phase. I hated my birth name and refused to use it in school. So until I was eleven I would pick a super hero alter ego and use that. Peter Parker, Clark Kent, Diana Prince were the ones that I used the most. Age eleven was horrible, more dark than I really want to talk about but I did read Grapes of Wrath and fell in love with Steinbeck. His depression era writing was so bleak for the most part it mirrored my life, kinda like hope was just a word that held no meaning anymore but it was the only word left in my vocabulary. For years after I signed every paper in school Tom Joad, Dora Flood, Lennie Small, Adam Trask or Cathy Ames. Dora Flood was my favorite, wanted to run run away from my life and build a small house just for me.

Lol, the things we forget huh? The teachers hated it but always gave up on trying to change me.

When I was growing up, I always wanted to be Cinderella, a fairy or a princess for Halloween. I loved all of the dolls I saw and loved playing games like Mystery Date with my neighborhood girl friends. They just accepted me as one of them until I turned 12. Everything changed around that time and I was so crushed. But I knew that I was a girl. I just didn't know what I could do, besides play dress-up when I could.


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Jim to Kim, my school reports said I lacked imagination!

My birth name is Morgan.  My mom is Kathryn.  My sister is Lauryn.  If I'd been born a girl, I would have been Caitlyn (no joke).  I haven't made up my mind yet but I think Megyn might be my best choice.

My birth name was Alejandro so I was lucky to go by Alex. For the longest time i just switched it to Alexandria. I figured it would be easier for those around me. Thankfully i never had it legally changed to that. I was doing it to make them happy and not really for myself. I'm glad I chose the name I use now. I'm a very picky person when it comes to these things as im very vain lol. Usually the one u don't expect will just stick and it will come back over and over again until it kinda knocks u upside the head. At least that's how it was for me. I'm sure whatever they pick will be just perfect :)

-Paloma <3

Quote from: VaxSpyder on February 21, 2018, 02:25:01 AM
My birth name is Morgan.  My mom is Kathryn.  My sister is Lauryn.  If I'd been born a girl, I would have been Caitlyn (no joke).  I haven't made up my mind yet but I think Megyn might be my best choice.

Why deny your parents' name for you if it is an option? I let my dad name me. :)

After looking at the most popular female and male names in the 1980's I kind of like the idea of going with the one that corresponds to my birth name. On the boys' names, Shane is 76th with Natasha being the equivalent.  We shall see. I have time to think about this.

I had picked out a name for myself but had not shared it with my wife. I sent her some trans info to read and she noticed the picking a name part.
When I got home from work she had me sit down to talk and asked if I had picked a name yet. I started calling myself Misty but with the lacy cloths I bought and the name she said it was to porn sounding. My wife is actually the one that made two suggestions. Darlene or Donna and the light went on, 💕💗Donna 💕💗just screamed at me as being perfect.