For me...Still being young and an teen.

I'm still searching through names, for me it doesn't matter if it's feminine or a more male tone because all in all, there's girls named Bob, Alex, Jesse and Tony. The same with men.

But my main goal with a name is diversity, I want a name that either is so unknown that it can be mine or is only relativity known in a certain region.

For me though, I've come around a couple names I like and just names I've thrown around to see what happens.

I've come across:
Inphyy (In-Fee)
Moonica (Moon-Uh-Cuh)
Aelita (I-Lead-Uh)
Artemis (Art-Uh-Miss)
Crimson (Ch-Rim-Zen)
Serenity (Sir-Ren-Uh-D)
Briseis (Bruh-Say-Us)
Nephrite (Nuh-F-Light)

And lastly Fiore (Fear-E)

Some of these names are common and some are unknown...It doesn't matter to me...It's the meaning and the sounding that I desire.

Like Nephrite, which is a green-white jewel and Fiore which stands for flower.

Just choose something from your heart or that matches you...It can be common but that's up to you.

I went with the name I would have if I'd been born a cisguy.  It's my grandfather's middle name, and that is a family naming tradition on my father's side.  Family is fairly important to me, and my mother picked my birth name because it was the name of a TV character she liked.  I always kinda resented that, all trans-ness aside.

Nephrite is awesome, if only because I think it is an act of genius to name yourself after a Sailor Moon character.

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on February 27, 2010, 09:48:39 PM
Nephrite is awesome, if only because I think it is an act of genius to name yourself after a Sailor Moon character.

Well that's not where I got it from but I guess that gives me more points to want to use it but Nephrite is also a mineral/gem.

Christopher/Chris is the dude's version of my birth name 

Mines i guess kinda cheesey.. its from a movie i absolutely love. Jack. from pitch black. the character at first appears to just be a young boy. but later on is revealed as a girl. I wish universal would have keep Jack as Jack a transkid in the next movie after dark fury.. But noooo.. had to make Jack into kyra, altho she was a total hottie.

Quote from: Aelita on February 27, 2010, 09:56:46 PM
Well that's not where I got it from but I guess that gives me more points to want to use it but Nephrite is also a mineral/gem.

Just keep in mind that 14-year-old anime nerds the world over will assume that you named yourself after Mr. Nutso McFlowinghair here:

Oh, Nephrite. 

Which is also a unisex name.

Quote from: Aelita on February 27, 2010, 11:57:00 PM
Which is also a unisex name.

Never said it wasn't. Same goes for any other stone-based name used by Sailor Moon antagonists, though - Jadeite, Beryl, etc. It is a beautiful name. I just think one should be aware of, and okay with, the cultural association before taking it.

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on February 27, 2010, 11:45:46 PM
Just keep in mind that 14-year-old anime nerds the world over will assume that you named yourself after Mr. Nutso McFlowinghair here:

Oh, Nephrite. 

I'm not even that big of an anime fan and even I thought of him.

Mine's still a bit up in the air.  I started using Kay on message boards many years ago because it's my first initial.  I'm still looking for something that I feel more connected to though.  Time will tell.
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If you want to see the top 1000 baby names in the US by year, or how the popularity of a particular name has changed, go here:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
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If nothing else, you can tell whether the name you've selected was used much for those in your same age group.

Quote from: Karridoll on February 27, 2010, 05:58:03 PM
Henliked Eric as a kid because his mom was gonna name him that is he was a boy. Also Evan. I really think he wants to keep those initials though. HH.... He was a profesional athlete and did some other things in the past where his initials were used a lot. He doesn't want to give them up.

I, too, wanted to keep my initials (JHS), so I looked through those letters of the largest baby name book I could find.  Jamison was the "J" name I liked the best that wasn't already taken by someone in my life.  Interestingly enough, the first thing everyone asks is, "Can I call you James?"  They could all manage 3 sylables with my old name, but now apparently it's too difficult.   

H is a tough one.  Thankfully I only needed to come up with one "H"    I really didn't feel much like a Hector, or a Horatio, or a Harry.  I liked Heath, but it didn't flow well with the rest of my name.  I also considered Hunter.  But then I came across Hadley, which means "Heather Meadow".  Since my mom had had a particular reason for giving me the middle name of "Heather", I thought it would be a nice nod to that.

I was curious and looked up my  and my kids names. My one daughter has not been in the top 1000 names for the last 100 years and neither has her middle name. I have one uniquely named girl. Other girls middle name don't show either.

Names have always been important to me.

Picking my name has been a struggle for years, even before facing my gender identity. In my youth, I heard a friend's theory that people have Given Names and True Names; some of TN are parallel with one's GN, but there are others who end up discovering their TN later one.

I was quite fond of that line of thinking for myself, because my (overtly feminine) Given Name definitely did not suite me. Unfortunately no matter how many baby name websites, name generators, derivatives, adaptions, etc I tried, I just never found a name that fit me. The dilemma grew more severe when I came to grips with my gender identity.

Then one day I was filling in the name area for one of those social networking websites and I wrote: Eli.

Eli is technically gender-neutral though it has masculine implications, it retained my parent's theme of naming their children biblical names, it is a contraction of Elizabeth (birth name), and it also retains my birth initial.

After I settled on Eli (truth be told I'm still settling), I figured that when the time came to legally change my name I will probably choose Elijah. I think Elijah is more masculine, looks nice for formal use, and I can still have the nickname of Eli; win/win situation.

Quote from: Aelita on February 27, 2010, 09:36:24 PMsome are unknown...

That's an understatement.

Aelita. . . Every time I see that I think of Code: Lyoko.

Quote from: SilverFang on February 28, 2010, 04:37:42 AM
That's an understatement.

Aelita. . . Every time I see that I think of Code: Lyoko.

lol, so I'm not the only one who thought that.

When I chose my name I really wanted to keep my initials CC, my sister and I have the same initials and its something that we really shared over the years so I started by looking at names that started with C. I didn't want a really common name because my birthname was really uncommon and I enjoyed having people comment on the rarity of my name and still do. My birthname had no masculine version. But how I went about it was that I picked up an old character naming book I had (I'm a writer so I had one lying around) and looked up meanings and personalities and those settled on the name Carson.

My birth name, Jennifer, doesn't have a masculine option either (although, I loved the story of Prince Jen when I was a kid).

My first name, Gabriel, picked me. It's really not all that easy to explain. I just kept finding myself identifying with characters in movies or books who had that name (e.g. Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing or Tilda Swinton in Constantine. I developed this strange obsession with the archangel Gabriel (I haven't been a Christian since I was in elementary school). I would see the name all over the place and I'd get this strange tug in my gut. Even before I was ready to admit to myself that I was trans, I would use that name in my head or as a screen name.

My middle name, James, took some time to come up with. I ended up doing sort of the same thing that middle school girls do with their crush, just in a different way: I wrote my first and last name down on a piece of paper and wrote a whole bunch of middle names in between until I found one that I liked.

I was told by one guy that Gabriel isn't a masculine enough name but I love the nickname, Gabe, and it makes me feel more masculine than my birth name ever did.

Some people know instinctively what they should be named, others take years and go through several different names before they find the right one. Hope he finds something that he likes.

Personally, I like the name Hayden.

I used one of the names my parents were considering naming me if I'd been born male.

I ddnt know until just a few weeks ago that I have been ussing Cynthia for my girl name since about 6.
My brother (younger) would get roped into playing house and barbioes and I demanded that the other children refer to me as Cynthia.
Funny thing is I thought I picked the name when I was a teen.
Go figure.
I tried to use other names at the request of a couple family members who have issues with the name but I found I was unable to do so. My name is Cynthia. It is the name I chose as a child and it is the name I chose to stick with in the long run.
I guess I have always been Cynthia, Peter was just a place holder.