Names and cultural considerations

[Emery.]

I think that having a gener neutral name would be cool. Or at least a nickname. But my native language doesn't offer such names. Now I live in UK. However, choosing a name from a different cultural background would feel somehow artificial for me. Not that I would feel bad being called an Anglo-Saxon name. I don't care that much. But wouldn't it be wierd to meet an Avery who is of Russian origin, was born there, speaks Russian better than English, and fully identifies as Russian, for example? I wouldn't have such a problem with naming potential kids with English names. They would grow up in here, or be at least born here. But if I changed my name to an English one, it would be kind of fake. At least that's what bubbles in my head. What are your thoughts on intersection of culture and name changes?

[S.Kobold]

I think being careful not to appropriate culture when choosing a name is important - however for English sounding names I don't think that comes into it much.

I've known one or two people who were Russian/Eastern European and adapting their name to something more English sounding when they moved to the UK because we Brits struggle to pronounce things we're not familiar with. And I've known Chinese and African people choose an "English Name" for similar reasons.

Doing this could mean therefore that some people won't feel as much reserve about asking you what your "real name" is as they would if you were not obviously not from the UK. For the most part this will be out of a motivation to learn an exotic name rather than to try and out you... but it likely would make you uncomfortable anyway.

There are a couple of Russian names that to an English ear come across as androgynous - or at least sound like they belong to the opposite gender they actually do. Like Misha (sp?) and Alexandra.

Could you use Anglicised words for an animal or a plant that you are attached to? I don't know how gendered Russian is as a language...

[Emery.]

I think being careful not to appropriate culture when choosing a name is important - however for English sounding names I don't think that comes into it much.

I've known one or two people who were Russian/Eastern European and adapting their name to something more English sounding when they moved to the UK because we Brits struggle to pronounce things we're not familiar with. And I've known Chinese and African people choose an "English Name" for similar reasons.

Yeah, I've seen that a lot, too. But my first name is extremely easy to pronounce and sounds very female. It's not very Eastern in origin.

... Alexandra ...

Wait, doesn't an "a" ending sound female to you? In Slovian languages, at least in some of them including my own native, "a" ending of a noun literally means "of feminine gender".

I don't know how gendered Russian is as a language...

I don't know either :P I think it might be extremely gendered. My native is like over the top gendered, all nouns and adjectives have a gender. Even fridges and carpets have genders, depending on their endings.

[m02a16ds]

It has nothing to do with gender neutrality, but I mostly go by an Anglicized form of my Slavic name Slavicized variation of a Hebrew name. It feels pretty authentic for both myself and other people, except for many Russians who still find my Slavicized name weird and too foreign for their taste :D

Edit: it kind of is foreign for them, since I am a foreigner. They're used to the masculine form of my name, but not to the feminine one which I bear. As it is obvious for me, I forgot that it was not obvious for everyone else and failed to specify.

[Nylocke]

Even though my username is the name of a anthro dragon dude from a web series called TOME I do kinda feel like its somewhat gender neutral and will think about using it every now and then (:

[daveb]

My opinion is that anyone and everyone should be able to decide what names suit themselves. Speaking only for myself, I would not be comfortable with a name that was obviously from an ethnicity that doesn't match mine. Also, being an atheist I would've preferred a non-Christian/non-biblical name. But I support anyone choosing their own names.

Alexandra certainly seems female gendered to me. Alex (or variations like Alexei/Alexi) do seem gender neutral. Same for Sasha, but that may be because I've known of both males and females with that name.

I do get what you're saying though. My name is definitely male and doesn't even have a good feminine form like a number of other male names. I would like to have been given a gender neutral name or even had a good gender neutral form of my given name. Yes, I known people can change their names, but it gets complicated when you've lived decades and have professional history with your given name. It would be more trouble than it's worth to try to deal with changing my name at this point in my life. Still, I have given a lot of thought to alternative names. I still haven't settled on one. There is one that I've been using in a few isolated instances, but it is perceived as female in the part of the world I live in (even though it is masculine in some languages).

Good luck in your quest! Maybe you can find a name that wouldn't seem too out of place for you and that is gender neutral and suits you? I don't know how different it is in the UK, but in the US I think it's not unusual for people who come from other countries to choose a new "Americanized" name when they settle here.

[Heart]

Where I live, it's normal for foreigners to have a "preferred name" in English that is different from their legal name. It's so normal that our university had a field in the application and administration pages for "legal name" and "preferred name" long before it occurred to anyone to ask for that for genderqueer folk :P When I have a class list of my students in whatever I'm TAing, I get a list that includes both their legal names and preferred names.

So, at least here on the west coast of Canada, having an English or Anglo-saxon preferred name would not at all be "odd" or considered culturally insensitive. There's even one student who has a preferred name that is from the same (non-English) culture as their legal name. I don't know why they have this, and there could be any number of reasons that really aren't any of my business, but I found myself automatically mentally referring to them with neutral pronouns, just in case it's a gender thing (I am not familiar enough with that culture or language to know if either of the names are gendered or not).

I honestly can't speak to how it is in the UK though. And ultimately, it's about whether you feel comfortable with it too. Whether or not it's culturally accepted is one thing, but even if it is, whether or not it feels good for you in another.

[Emery.]

So, at least here on the west coast of Canada, having an English or Anglo-saxon preferred name would not at all be "odd" or considered culturally insensitive.

Even if your name is almost the same as its English version, and is pronounced almost the same? Say, like Anna and Anne? If my name was Anna and I asked everybody to call me Emery? With a surname that is, say, Kuznetzova (Russian Smith with a female ending)? Wouldn't that be odd?

[ChillaKilla]

I've had a few thoughts about this myself. I've considered using a native Hawaiian gender-neutral name because that's part of my ethnic makeup (adoption makes figuring out my cultural alignment hard haha). I particularly like the name Kealani since it's really similar to my given name, it's gender neutral, and it can be shortened to Kea which fits on a name tag when I get a job.

I've briefly considered a Chinese name, since that's another heritage I can lay claim to and I quite like the name Choua/Choa but I concede that it would be difficult to pronounce and I do not look like the most Han Chinese person in existence |'D

A third option I've toyed with would be the Irish name Faolan which has been my online moniker for years. The only concerns I have for that would be that it's a fully masculine name and I'm not Irish at all (though I don't think Irish appropriation is a great concern in the world of culture, correct me if I am wrong ;) )

[LadyErzsebet]

You could always say its a nickname if anyone questions it. You don't even have to go with an explanation about gender or language or anything, just say its a nickname some people call you and you've grown attached to it. Sad thing is, lots of cis folks will respect a (they presume cis person's) nickname before they respect a trans person's chosen name. Society sucks.

Also, yeah, Slavic languages mark gender on tons of things. Mostly adjectives and nouns.

[dash]

This is a really complicated question!

As I've studied lots of languages, I've "picked up" names over the years. :) Some of it was silly grade school "you're learning this language, so you're all going to have named from that language in our class" stuff (but the names never stuck), but in other contexts, the names stuck, and became actually what I was known as in a community. In Chinese, in particular, foreigners take on Chinese names, and Chinese people, when they move to Western countries, take on Western names.

All of this is very difficult when it comes to cultures that don't have gender-neutral names. Also, whatever name you go by, if your language marks your gender several times in each sentence you utter (every verb, every adjective you use to describe yourself, etc.), then the name question feels a bit moot.

Another culture and name gender issue comes up in cultures where one is named after one's ancestors... how do I rename myself without disrespecting my family and my ancestors? Do all cultures even have the notion of changing one's name because one likes another one better, or is that what nicknames are for? I don't really know. I chose this name (Dash) because it steered away from the feminine gender, while at the same time cleverly solving the "honoring the ancestors" problem (and made my parents happy). But I only felt I could do that in my English name, where names are derived from or loosely based on those of ancestors, not my Hebrew name, which comes directly from ancestors. /shrug/

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

[dash]

Sad thing is, lots of cis folks will respect a (they presume cis person's) nickname before they respect a trans person's chosen name. Society sucks.

Oh wow, this. Yes.

I could go around and be like "I'm a girl named Hank" and they would be like "...OK." But if I said I was a boy, then suddenly there's an issue. (So bizarre.)

Long ago, I went to school with a girl named Aaron. Not Erin (which some people mistook her name for), but Aaron. When asked about it she'd just say that's what her parents named her. And that was it (at least as far as I ever saw).

I wonder if my school would have been as accepting of a boy with a traditionally girl's name. I doubt it.

[J. van Deijck]

I'm gonna move to England and stay there, and it doesn't seem a big problem to me. I have chosen names that actually occur in there, moreover, my middle name is pretty common there. I don't see it as artificial, though.

If I'm going to marry my boyfriend, I will take his last name as well, and it all will just sound right. He is English.

But my chosen first name is of Hebrew origin and appears worldwide, so I don't think it makes any difference or problem.

[Nylocke]

Sad thing is, lots of cis folks will respect a (they presume cis person's) nickname before they respect a trans person's chosen name. Society sucks.

Oh wow, this. Yes.

I could go around and be like "I'm a girl named Hank" and they would be like "...OK." But if I said I was a boy, then suddenly there's an issue. (So bizarre.)

Long ago, I went to school with a girl named Aaron. Not Erin (which some people mistook her name for), but Aaron. When asked about it she'd just say that's what her parents named her. And that was it (at least as far as I ever saw).

I wonder if my school would have been as accepting of a boy with a traditionally girl's name. I doubt it.

Yea I heard of that. When a trans person tells me there new name I at lease give them the respect and refer to them in the preferred name whether they transitioned or not. My brother worked with a someone who was MtF transgender and she prefered to be called Erika or something while the given name was Eric. She didn't transition yet my brother had a hard time with that in his mind and said "I'm not gonna call someone who looks like a dude a girly name o_O". I told him he has to give her the same respect as he would anyone else even if that means calling her by her prefered name rather then her given name.

[Qwerty321]

If you need a Russian gender neutral name, Саша (Sasha) or Валя (Valya) are possible options. And I heard, many people of Russian origin change their last names from let's say Kuznetsov(a) to Kuznetsoff, which sounds absolutely gender neutral.

[m02a16ds]

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

[J. van Deijck]

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

[Qwerty321]

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

It's mostly masculine, but I actually knew some women, whose name was Sasha (Aleksandra).

[Qwerty321]

Another possible options are Женя (Zhenya), Валера (Valera), maybe Слава (Slava), theoretically Вася (Vasya) (female version of Vasilisa), but I actually never known any female with that name, even among selebrities or fictional characters. Again theoretically Фима (Phima) (Ефимия?), I'm not sure if this name can be used as a female name though. Гера as well can be interpreted both as a masculine and feminine name, but I don't know how to spell it in English correctly.

[m02a16ds]

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

I personally know at least 10 women named Alexandra.

[J. van Deijck]

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

I personally know at least 10 women named Alexandra.

Alexandra, yes. But in my country they use the diminutive version Ola. Which is kind of funny to me because in my mind, Ola is rather a diminutive for Olga.

[Qwerty321]

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

I personally know at least 10 women named Alexandra.

Alexandra, yes. But in my country they use the diminutive version Ola. Which is kind of funny to me because in my mind, Ola is rather a diminutive for Olga.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

I personally know at least 10 women named Alexandra.

Alexandra, yes. But in my country they use the diminutive version Ola. Which is kind of funny to me because in my mind, Ola is rather a diminutive for Olga.

Olya is diminutive for Olga in Russia. I'm not sure if there the same name in other languages, it seems it has Scandinavian origin though.

[m02a16ds]

Olya is diminutive for Olga in Russia. I'm not sure if there the same name in other languages, it seems it has Scandinavian origin though.

It does. "Olga" or "Olha" is actually modified "Helga".

[J. van Deijck]

Olya is diminutive for Olga in Russia. I'm not sure if there the same name in other languages, it seems it has Scandinavian origin though.

It does. "Olga" or "Olha" is actually modified "Helga".

That's it. I remember it because my great grandma had a sister whose name was Olga, and everyone called her Ola. It seems that Polish Ola is the same diminutive as Russian Olya :3 just the pronunciation is slightly different.

For Aleksandra, Polish people sometimes shorten it to Sandra, but Sandra also works as a separate name.

[m02a16ds]

That's it. I remember it because my great grandma had a sister whose name was Olga, and everyone called her Ola. It seems that Polish Ola is the same diminutive as Russian Olya :3 just the pronunciation is slightly different.

For Aleksandra, Polish people sometimes shorten it to Sandra, but Sandra also works as a separate name.

Ironically enough, that would make sense in Ukrainian, because we spell this name with an O - Oleksandr and Oleksandra. But in Polish, I just don't get it.

[Qwerty321]

Olya is diminutive for Olga in Russia. I'm not sure if there the same name in other languages, it seems it has Scandinavian origin though.

It does. "Olga" or "Olha" is actually modified "Helga".

Is "Olha" an Ukrainian name?

Olya is diminutive for Olga in Russia. I'm not sure if there the same name in other languages, it seems it has Scandinavian origin though.

It does. "Olga" or "Olha" is actually modified "Helga".

That's it. I remember it because my great grandma had a sister whose name was Olga, and everyone called her Ola. It seems that Polish Ola is the same diminutive as Russian Olya :3 just the pronunciation is slightly different.

For Aleksandra, Polish people sometimes shorten it to Sandra, but Sandra also works as a separate name.

I've also had an interesting expierence with name "Sasha" (masculine). An online friend of mine has that name, and we also have a mutual online friend from Germany. That man from Germany forgot Sasha's name, and asked me. I answered "Sasha", and he told it was a different name. I was surprised thinking maybe Sasha didn't want to disclose his real name to that man. But then he remembered the name was Alex. He didn't know it's the English version of "Sasha", he thought it were two different names.

P.S. I didn't know Catholics also use the name Olga. I thought it was only Orthodox Christian saint.

[m02a16ds]

Is "Olha" an Ukrainian name?

Yes. My great-grandmother was called that.

P.S. And yes, we do recognize St. Olga, because she was canonized before the Great Schism.

[J. van Deijck]

That's how the differences between various groups of languages are :D if I'm not wrong, there are about 10 versions of John in English. In Polish, there are two. Some people get confused as well :D

@Sonechko, I can tell you that I don't get it as well. Theoretically, Polish is similar to Ukrainian (we just use the Latin alphabet, but, in fact, all Slavonic languages are similar yet have their own characteristics), and it's weird how we do it in tbe way you mentioned, it would really make more sense in Ukrainian because of what you said. :o

[dash]

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

Oh, I know where I got confused... it's a strictly masculine name in Russia, but has been used as a feminine given name in the West (like in Elton John's song). Sorry for the mix-up.

[dash]

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

Back to Russian, there are some Russian names and nicknames that are gender neutral. Nikita and Sasha come to mind.

Nikita is not gender neutral in Russian, it's masculine. Sasha, as a diminutive from both Alexander and Alexandra, qualifies though.

I've always thought Sasha was masculine in Russia as well :o

At least all Russian people whom I know named Sasha are actually males.

It's mostly masculine, but I actually knew some women, whose name was Sasha (Aleksandra).

Yes, I've known at least one Russian woman (from Moscow, iirc) named Sasha. As Qwerty321 said, it's a diminitive of Aleksandra. I've also known male Sashas.