I started to type this as a comment reply, then thought...

[alexseanchai]

...'you know, the comments to kaberett's heartbreaking poem are probably not the place for this thought'.

Today I emailed a client. The client responded with "Thank you, Ms./Mrs. [Surname]." Which, okay. My name's Elizabeth. Stereotypical gender: obvious. And the client had no way to know either that 'Mrs.' is not an appropriate honorific for me (and never will be even if I do get married someday, because reasons) or that 'Ms.' isn't me today. Hell, half the time I don't know what gender I am at any given moment, so how can I expect anyone else to?

But...I don't want to have to answer to 'she' pronouns forever. I don't want to be Ms. [Surname]. I like being Elizabeth just fine, but. I don't expect anyone to default to 'Mx.' for a long time yet, but it'd be nice to have people wondering whether I'm a Mr. or a Ms. instead of a Ms. or a Mrs.

Y'all may notice, if you click over to alexconall profile, that I've got two middle names for my pen name. Elizabeth Alexandria Rowan Conall. (Wallet middle name, singular, begins with A but is not anything related to Alexandria.) I'd feel weird being an Alex because I know an Alex (hi kaberett), but 'Rowan' is also gender-neutral...'Rowan [Surname]' sounds hella awkward but if I liked my surname I'd publish under it. I like the sound of 'Rowan Conall', though. Even if my mom's first reaction, after she gets done with the cissexism and wtf, is going to be "I didn't think you were that much of an Anne McCaffrey fan." (No. No, I'm really not, anymore. Tent pegs, etc.)

I'd appreciate it if any of y'all who've changed your name for gender identity reasons, or who've thought about it, would go into your thought process in the comments. Because I need to put a hell of a lot of thought into this.

And any legal or otherwise meatspace part of the name change cannot of course happen till I'm out as genderqueer to my family, or as part of the coming-out process, which means not till I'm out of their house which means not for a few years yet. I've got time to think. But I do need to think.

Comments

[kaberett]

I managed to get away with changing my name without coming out because I changed my surname at the same time, so I explained it away as "I wanted to add a gender-neutral name at the same time as... to make people's heads explode because THEY DESERVE IT."

I know what you mean about liking first names -- I actually genuinely like my birth name (and kept it as my first name), and I don't object to answering to it to people who already know me as it, but I don't particularly feel like sharing it to people who don't because (a) if they're going to be shits about my gender, I'm not going to give them a gendered name to hang it off, and (b) if they're *not* going to be shits about my gender they might well Just Not Want To Know It).

FWIW I would be 100% okay with you going with Alex -- I actually have a cousin who shares my first name + surname, plus there are at least two other Alex [surnames] in my current city (it's a small city!) -- but I appreciate that that is not the whole of the issue.

Also Rowan is nice. I occasionally get wisps of regret that I'm not Robin, but actually what I have is perfectly good kthx ;)

As far as the name goes - I hit the point where I realised I could. not. face. publishing academic papers under an obviously gendered name, and I was about to have to. So I'd been playing around for a long time with othere-gendered names as nicknames, but then I settled down in earnest to trying to work something out, and... what my process ended up being was: narrowing down to names I thought might suit me, and then sitting with them and rolling them about in my head and my mouth and seeing how I felt about the rhythms.

If you are after lists, I have Quite A Collection and can probably dig them out?

But yes. That is... roughly how it went for me.

[alexseanchai]

behindthename.com has a thinger to randomly generate gender-ambiguous names, which I think is actually how I came up with 'Rowan'. (Though it may have been through a scan of the Irish names for something meaning 'red'. I am redheaded Irish-American. Mostly.) So the lists offer is kind, thank you, but unnecessary.

I think I'd keep 'Elizabeth' as a/the middle name, myself. Still part of my name but not the part people default to thinking is my actual call-name, you know?

Thanks for answering.

[kaberett]

I absolutely 100% know, yep!

[silvercat17]

I started going by my new name when I went back to college. I probably should have eased my parents into it more before I did the legal change (which is hella expensive), but I don't know if anything would have helped.

[alexseanchai]

nods Thanks

[kindkit]

Saw this on my network--hope you don't mind my dropping in to the discussion.

I've change my name one-and-a-half times. The first, official, time was when I changed my last name, because I didn't want to carry around the name of my asshole father. I changed it to my mother's maiden name. (This turned out to be ironic, as later I learned that her father, whose name was her maiden name, had been an even bigger asshole than my father, so I may change it again if/when I change the rest of my name legally.)

The "half a time" was picking a male name for myself (I am a trans man). I had some very idiosyncratic criteria: I wanted a traditionally masculine first and middle name, and I wanted names that had some connection to queer men I admire in history or literature, plus the usual considerations of sounding good etc. Oh, and I wanted names that only lent themselves to nicknames I like.

"I didn't think you were that much of an Anne McCaffrey fan."

I wonder if it's harder for people with fannish involvement to name ourselves, precisely because names often do have associations with characters or actors for us. After I'd found a combination I liked and my heart was pretty set on it, I realized that my first and middle name are also the names of two actors I kind of ship together! It was completely coincidental--I picked the names for other reasons--but it makes me feel a little awkward nevertheless. Only a little, though.

My life, like yours although for different reasons, is not in a place where I can make the name change legal anytime soon. I don't know how hard it will be. The first name change wasn't too bad, but I lived in a state (Minnesota) that doesn't make it terribly difficult, plus it wasn't a gendered change--I only changed my surname and I didn't even know yet that I was trans. I've heard there's a lot more hassle for people who switch from a "female" name to a "male" name or vice versa; I don't know if the same is true for changing to a gender neutral name.

[alexseanchai]

Don't mind at all. Thank you for your thoughts!

[barrelofrain]

I hear you on this. I am out of my parents' house, and it's still not something that's been easy for me to bring up with them (so I basically haven't).

I go by cat, which is a nickname (not on my license). I feel like I could deal with being cat forever, but would probably prefer something else more masculine or gender neutral at least. BUT, I cannot deal with being [legal name] forever, and it makes me cringe when people call me that at doctor's offices, etc. I'm not sure if I should just legally change it to cat, or if I should wait until I've decided if I want to change it to something else entirely.

[echan]

My first name on my birth certificate is gender neutral when spoken but has one of the common gendered spellings. My jobs, the work I do, is often done primarily via text.

I got tired of all the pronouns being applied simply because of that spelling. It was mentally tiring the feeling of the weight of all the assumptions people seemed to be making about me just because of the letters that spelled my name.

I changed my name to a gender neutral or ambiguous spelling. I kept the same pronunciation.

[alexseanchai]

nods Won't work for me, my name's too obviously gendered, but thanks.