Ok, so I have been having trouble picking out a name for myself.  I was doing some reading on the internet and looked at some suggestions of how to pick a name, but I am still stuck.  I would like to keep my initials which leaves me picking a name that starts with J and a middle name that starts with A.  I think I like Julie and have been trying it on for size in the forums a little bit, but I still just don't know.  As for a middle name, my current name is Allen and it has family significance as well, so I was thinking of making my middle name Allana.  Does Julie Allana flow well?  How does one make a decision on this when this will form part of my identity going forward?  I consulted a list of the most popular names from when I was born and Julie is the name I liked best, but Jenny is a close second.  Jennifer was the most popular name in my birth year, but I don't think I like Jennifer so much.  Any thoughts would be most welcome.

           -Julie (maybe)

When you have decided on a name, a moderator can change it for you. The catch is it can't be used by somebody else but you can add special characters to make it unique. In addition, you only get two name changes every 6 months so choose wisely.

Most of the time, when you find the right name, you know it. The name just feels right and you know your search has ended. In my case, I wasn't that unhappy with my old name but it wasn't feminine and I just happened to stumble onto my name when I looked at somebody license plate. In addition, I like a name that's not commonly used as it make me unique but that's me. Define what's important in a name and find a name that meets those standards.

  Hi Julie,

For the record I like Julie. My own name considerations were the same as yours, I wanted to retain my initials. I had used Jeanette for many other purposes and I started with it here. But my initials are LJW so my user name had to move to my middle name and I had to come up with a first starting with an L. I came up with Laura and ran it by a few friends and two of them didn't like it for one reason or another and suggested Laurie. She said she could do Laurie. I liked it because it was close to Laura but less formal and more fun sounding. So I tried it out here and I've been Laurie ever since. Both Laura and Jeanette were girls I had crushes on and dated a few times. So it is sort of a tribute to them.

Hugs,
   Laurie

I was dubbed by friends that had seen me in femme attire in the past.  They didn't feel like trying to use my given name since I didn't look very masculine at that point.  Naming yourself is very difficult.  I took the name Victoria becuase so many of my friends came up with the same monicker over the years.  Funny part is that the name kept coming up unpromted with different groups of friends over the years.  So, I kept it.  4 different friends, from 4 different parts of the country over 2 decades... always Victoria.  I just picked my own middle name based on what I felt had a nice ring to it.  I didn't take keeping my initials into consideration.  Too many friends and family had "J" names, and I didn't feel like taking one of theirs as my own.  So I took Victoria.  JSB are not easy initials, so I took a hard left with VQB.

I wanted to keep my initials the same.  For my first name, Kathy was as close as I could get phonetically to my old name.  My middle name, Lauren, is a feminized version of my old middle name.  I had to decide if Kathy was going to be short for Katherine or Kathleen.  I went with Kathleen because it's the Irish version and I'm Irish.

I'll most likely keep the same name I have except getting rid of the O and adding an A. That way my family and friends won t have a problem changing my Nickname, that is if they accept me.

I chose a name that resonated with me. Sure my full name name seems very formal. Ellenore, but by making a nickname it sounds fun and cheeky! My chosen name is completely different from my legal name at the moment but I decided on it because I grew with it. At first I loved the name Elizabeth, because of a video game character from Secret of Evermore. I liked it called myself that when I was a kid. It later changed to Eli then Eliza Lee. But by the time another game came around, Phantasy Star Online, I liked the robot character Elenor but made it sound more majestic by spelling it Ellenorea (ell-en-nor-ee-ah). And I realize I am such a big nerd. My middle name June came from a song my friends made way back when.

But find a name that resonates with you. Something that may have sentimental value or reminds you of a happy time like me and these video games and the friends I used to jam with. There are also trans youtubers who talk about how they chose their name.

I'm pretty late with my answer and I guess that you have already settled for Julie, lovely name by the way. Much like Dena I stumbled over my name, Sandra, while looking trough a list of names, maybe not stumble, sins I was actively looking. But The name Sandra had come up many times during my childhood, my parents considered Sandra for both me and my sister while deciding names and both my mum and dad loved the 80:s pop artist Sandra ^_^ and constantly referenced Sandra as a lovely name. Being bourn in the 90:s made Sandra fit pretty well with the naming fad as well. So when I saw that name in the list I knew Immediately That my name had always been Sandra ^_^

Anyway good luck with finding your name, and when you do find it you will know it's yours <3

I like Julie w/o Allanna but it seems you have decided

for me Christy always just felt right its a variant on my boy name

@ JulieAllana:   I, too, wanted to keep my initials the same, and in fact my male name is very close to my female name except for 2 letters so it made things a lot easier, when I sign something I can usually get away with using my first name initials and middle name initials or if the full first name is require I can scribble so it looks like my given name....  next step is to get my drivers license and passport changed to female, probably will do that before summer as I have some traveling to do and soon the airlines will want to see a passport or enhanced drivers license to get on a plane so is is imperative that I get this done because I look very little like my old male self pictures on my documents.

... or were you just trying to decide on a screen name for this site and not your legal name???

I even get to keep my gmail address as it uses my initials

    Julie

I too wanted to keep my initials. Being a Patrick, Patricia works well for now. And this way if someone says Pat i will still respond by habit instead of acting like I forgot my own name lol. Although when the time comes to making it legal Pamela Jean is still in the running.
~Patty

Initially I wanted to keep my initials 'JR'. I started by going through a list of 'J' names, but it could not be similar to the name of a relative or friend. I liked both Jessica and Jennifer, each name allows for several shortened versions. However I remembered that 'Jenny' is also a term used for a female mule, so I went with Jessica. I basically did the same for my middle name, Rose. It just balances well with my first name and it is a classic woman's name. I also considered a few other names from friends and family, not all of them were 'JR', but by that time I no longer felt as strongly about keeping my original initials. Eventually I asked my daughters for help. 'Jessica Rose' was the name they agreed on. Oddly enough it has the same number of characters as my old name - 'John Richard'.

Choosing your own name is indeed difficult, it is not something a person usually gets to do. Normally your name is given to you by those who love you, which is one reason I asked my daughters for help. It made them a part of the process, and now when someone asks how I chose my name I can say that my daughters chose it for me!

As so many others, I wanted to keep my initials. I decided there'd be no change in my last name, since I run my own business, intend to continue trading on my reputation, and have no plans to go stealth and start over somewhere else.

For the first name, I first checked with my mom to see if see if she'd had a girl name picked out for me. Apparently my sister ended up with it 11 months later. So to keep thing simple I feminized Stephen to Stephanie.

The middle name I had a chance to get creative with. I've written about it in other threads here, so I'll just say that I found a word that had some real meaning to me, and probably isn't used by many, if any people. My middle name is Rhapsody.

I will caution about one thing I've run into. If you make a simple change, like Patrick->Patricia, you may want to tell people to use the full name, at least for a while. I told people they could call me Steph, and they easily slipped into that, just like using Pat would be. But it's too easy. The name is so close to the old one (or with Pat, identical) that it gives no gender cues. For me, they all get the name right, but still get the pronouns wrong. Using Steph doesn't trigger enough thought that there's been a real change. If I had asked them to use Stephanie, the obviously feminine name would have made it easier for them to remember feminine pronouns. Or that's my theory, anyway.


- Stephanie

Before settling on a name I compiled lists of ones I liked from those most popular around my year of birth, my "age cohort". Also included in my lists were names that I just liked in general, names whose meaning seemed appropriate, etc. The lists were reviewed & re-reviewed for at least a few months, but no name felt right.

One day, after my daily meditation and some inner child work I thought to simply pose the question. Due to the inner child work, it felt like I was asking her. "What is our name?" Immediately (no, I'm not kidding) the name "Amy" popped into my head. It wasn't a name on my copious list of names, but okay, it felt right. In for a penny, in for a pound, so I also asked, "Do we have a middle name?" and immediately again, "Yes" popped into my head along with "Marie".  It felt so right, and then I looked up the traditional meanings of those two names. The "name meaning" game should be taken with a huge grain of salt, imo, but the ones associated with my name also felt right.

There's another gender non-specific name I came up with that sometimes gets used. It's based on a variation of a nickname I had as a kid. I think of it more as a pen name or screen name than my "real" name. I use it on ->-bleeped-<-, for instance, so if any of you see "Jax Allenby" on the trans sub->-bleeped-<-s, that's me.

Stephanie, very good points i hadn't considered that. I'm still at least a year out from presenting and using a new name. I will definitely keep what you said in mind when the final decision is made. Just starting this journey and I have a lot to learn !!
~Patty

Quote from: Redlo on February 12, 2018, 03:36:13 PM
Stephanie, very good points i hadn't considered that. I'm still at least a year out from presenting and using a new name. I will definitely keep what you said in mind when the final decision is made. Just starting this journey and I have a lot to learn !!
~Patty

Actually, as long as you're not in Ireland where some men are called Paddy, Patty is regarded as a very feminine name, and would probably help you get past the type of problems I've been having. As for noticing when someone calls your new name (Steph or Stephanie for me) you'll get used to it very quickly. You'll have put so much thought into it before you tell others to use it that you'll know it's you.

That doesn't mean that you won't fall into the trap of old speech patterns. After all the complaining I've done about being misgendered and "deadnamed", I've done it to myself. My excuse was that I've known me longer than anyone else. It was still galling.


- Stephanie

Like some others, I wanted to keep the initials of my first and middle name.  Went with Angela for the first/given name, and for the middle name just went with what most strangers called me (Jessica, which was lucky since the middle initial of my dead name is "J").  So - AJ, or Angela Jessica.  Not sure why others thought I was a Jessica, though..."Angela"..."Jessica"...don't really sound similar...but it worked out in the end.

The screen name is because I started my transition in the summer, July 10.

You have a pretty avatar, JulieAllana. 

I got a complete divorce from my name AAB: first, middle and last. The initials are not the same, either. For the first and middle names, I took names that inspired me. For the last, I took a very common name.

I didn't plan it this way, but I noticed about a week or so ago that my name is like one of those Russian matryoshka nesting dolls. My last name is quite ordinary, which fits my presentation; I'm an understated sort of girl. My middle name is the one I go by; it's very feminine, which I love. My first name is wildly exotic; that's the me that lives deep in my heart, that most people never see.

It worked out rather well.  I think having a name that you love, for whatever reason, is critical. Your new name should be special; it will be yours for the rest of your life. It's how you will come to see yourself, if you don't already.

Growing up, friends, schoolmates and later smarty pants co-workers thought they were being  funny by calling me the girl version of the name I was given by my parents.....little did they know that it always made me smile inside to be called Michelle 😊