So, I think most of us were given names by our parents that don't match our identities... male names for female and vice versa.  I'm in a weird situation because my given name is both highly unique and vaguely androgynous (mainly because it's so unique).  It's unique enough that if you plug it into facebook, the only person that would come up would be me.  I've only heard of one other person with my name who, ironically, is a woman.  Because it's so unique, it's also very strongly tied into my own sense of identity separate from maleness/femaleness -- I was never a Bill or a Bob or a Jeff so I never suffered from the feeling that my name didn't reflect how I felt about myself inside.

So my issue is, what to do about my name if/when I decide to really transition?  I'm using Vesper here, but it's more of a name that I like, rather than a name that I can appropriate for myself.  I'm in a weird position in that almost any characteristically female name I could choose for myself would be sort of a step down, because it would be giving up the uniqueness of the name I've been carrying around for 25+ years.

Then I also consider, what if I keep my name?  As I mentioned, it's androgynous enough that by itself it won't give away my birth gender (and in fact I've been mistaken/correctly-seen as female in situations where people have seen my writing but not seen me personally) -- but like I said, it's so unique that post/mid-transition, if anyone has a... doubt about me, they could just plug it into facebook and I would be 'outed' in an instant, and then that leads to the question of just how stealth I would want to be in the first place...

So I'm in a bit of a situation as you can see.  Has anyone else had experience with having a unique name like this?  Or just general thoughts/advice regardless of whether you have/had a unique name or not.  Thanks!

is there any way you could keep the same name but maybe change the spelling by adding or changing a letter without changing the way it is pronounced? just a thought!

if you like it, keep it. there's no law saying you have to have a female name. and women are more likely to be given androgynous or unisex names than men anyway. also more unique names. men are usually named from standard choices.
so no one will blink.

i see no reason to change it unless you want to.  You can always kill your facebook account.

I would suggest taking a look at the section on names at www.tsroadmap.com I think the name you use should be well thought out as you will have to live with it in all aspects of your life.

Wendy

Quote from: lizard on January 31, 2009, 08:06:35 PM
i see no reason to change it unless you want to.  You can always kill your facebook account.

Thats... a good point.  I don't even use facebook really.

It might be a new thread but at sometime you will be outed.
So what? It's your life, your body, your happiness.
Just tell the turkeys to gobble

Cindy James

Sounds to me there really isn't a reason to change it, unless like Lizard says, you just want to...