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What's in a Name


A Cool Fool

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I go by Yoruka online and my main OC in rp is called Yoruka. My real name means 'migrator', but I've felt at peace with both names, Yoruka more strongly. At times I sometimes feel a lot more detached from my real one. But those times are rare. When I'm Yoruka, it's an alter ego that's really just me, but steampunk and really comfortable with my identity. I can say my opinions without fear of backlash (people online are much better people to confide in than my family), I can freely write and I can enjoy the aspects of myself I'm exploring.

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44 minutes ago, A Cool Fool said:

I don't really know if this is anything, it's just been something new I've been noticing and wanted to share I guess.

Has anyone else had experiences with wanting to change names, or changing their name from their birth name? 

I think I don't like my given name because I associate it with nasty things, like family or school or people in general. I never felt connected to it. Actually, to this day I don't understand why people enjoy being called by their names...

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Fraggle Underdark

I'm ambivalent about my given name and it's not how I self-reference in my own thoughts. I always had some disconnect from normal societal  interests and I associate my given name with the rest of society and how it sees me. I don't mind that but it feels like my given name is "my name within the regular worldview" and there's another name I've long used for "my name within my worldview", i.e. how I really see myself. I might be unusually content (not sure why) with being misunderstood to a certain degree. I guess actually it bugs me to be seen as allosexual - I don't think less of allosexuals but I'd prefer not to be thought of that way. But personally I'm pretty content about "this name isn't what I identify with but whatever". I encourage you to do what feels right for you though!

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I really dislike my name, but finding another is hard... 

Also, the concept is weird. Having a combination of syllables that can designate a person, and in most cases, many different people who don't all know one another... and the fact that many of them are connected to either of the binary genders... well. I don't want to be associated with a gender because of my syllables. The idea of sharing them with strangers (or even nouns in some languages...) weirds me out, too. 

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My name has always felt uncomfortable, but I've never found one that suits me more. 😢 

 

Congrats on finding one you like!

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SorryNotSorry

I've hated my birth name for as long as I can remember. Once I pay my car off, I'm going to fill out an application to take my pen name as my legal name.

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6 hours ago, A Cool Fool said:

I don't really know if this is anything, it's just been something new I've been noticing and wanted to share I guess.

Has anyone else had experiences with wanting to change names, or changing their name from their birth name? 

I realized I was agender a few weeks back and since then I've been trying to use my initials as my name instead (I was christened with a double name and use the initals of those two). I had been doing that before, when I was too lazy to write my whole name so it's not something completely new.

 

I have never disliked my name (nor have I started to after my discovery) but I have never felt connected to it either; my friends are always more upset than me when I'm called some variation of my name while I just shrug it off. 

 

I haven't told anyone I want to be called AM, so I use it in writing and signing off e-mails (to both known and unknown people) and it feels good and more 'me'. I might introduce myself as AM to new people but at this point I don't think I will ask the people I know to change the way they adress me (imagining trying to explain this to my grandparents kind of freaks me out a bit).

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15 minutes ago, AM42 said:

I might introduce myself as AM to new people but at this point I don't think I will ask the people I know to change the way they adress me (imagining trying to explain this to my grandparents kind of freaks me out a bit).

Oh, yeah, this is so hard 😓 there's also the fact that your parents named you and going 'well yeah but no' can result in awfully awkward reactions...

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5 minutes ago, Poe's Creep Meta said:

Oh, yeah, this is so hard 😓 there's also the fact that your parents named you and going 'well yeah but no' can result in awfully awkward reactions...

Exactly! Personally I think (hope) my parents would be understanding but I'm not really in a hurry to find out. I'm also conscious of all the awkward situations that may arise after such a request is made, just the need to re-inform people everytime they slip up feels tiring and embarassing since, for me, it's such a small change and my name doesn't affect me that much.

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SorryNotSorry

This reply is probably Hot Box material, but I think there should be no minimum age for kids who want to change their names without parental consent, and NO FEES.

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ElasticPlanet
On 10/18/2019 at 9:43 AM, A Cool Fool said:

Has anyone else had experiences with wanting to change names

Not really. Always resented the name I got given, and wished I'd been called something else instead. But actually changing my name would be so traumatic to my somewhere-near-autistic brain that it's unlikely ever to happen. So far I can't think of any other name that I'd want badly enough to make it worth all that. If there were names I could choose that would make everyone call me by they pronouns, maybe I'd be more interested...

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fooledbysecrecy

i've always hated my name, even long before i realised i'm (probably) agender. trouble is i DO feel connected to it?? :lol: in a sense that i've never had a nickname so i've never gone by anything else. and it's hard to suddenly start identifying with another name, not that i would even know which. good thing about my name is that it's not very common and i suppose it's sort of gender neutral too but i just really really hate it.

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Janus the Fox

I have a disconnect in a way that I don’t feel anything all too special with my real name, I feel that though my parents where lazy choosing a first and second name beginning with A, even if it where a long deliberated choice of name.  My first real name is masculine while spelt backwards sounds like a very old feminine name, for at the very least, matches a non/no gender/middle ground gender wise.

 

I like my online and furry identity name Janus, it’s meaning when most simple is a person with 2 faces, these 2 faces are opposite to each other, can mean one that is male and one that is female.  The character is opposite of what the real life identity is for creative purposes.  Janus is also close to sounding feminine like a name like Janis if or when I transition.

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DuranDuranfan

I wouldn’t mind a more neutral name. I like Simi, it sounds kinda neutral. 
 

In India, Simi can be short for Simran, which I think can be a guy or girls name.

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SorryNotSorry
On 10/20/2019 at 10:04 AM, DuranDuranfan said:

I wouldn’t mind a more neutral name. I like Simi, it sounds kinda neutral. 
 

In India, Simi can be short for Simran, which I think can be a guy or girls name.

Simi is also Icelandic for “telephone”, but  it recalls the word simian. Not worth the gamble.

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I've never really liked my name either. It's a name, and I guess it's fine as a name, it's not ugly or anything, and I do react to it (like when someone says it when I'm engrossed in a book or something, I'll hear them and look up), but it's just not really mine.

It's a common name, and I know a lot of people with the same name, so it never felt like it belonged to me. That's the excuse I use for why I don't like my name to some people I'm not out to. That's partially true. But also, I dislike my name to the point that I'd be uncomfortable sharing it here, because it doesn't represent me, and I don't want you guys to associate it with me (please don't start guessing at what it is). I kinda get this internal mini-cringe reaction every time I hear someone say it (same as with pronouns), and that's because it's too feminine and just not me, not because it's too common of a name.

 

I have a name I'd strongly prefer being called, but I can't. I major in Sinology, which means I study the Chinese language, but also history, anthropology, economy, etcetera. First year's students get assigned a Chinese name by our Chinese/Taiwanese teachers to use during class. By some sort of miracle, I was assigned a masculine leaning unisex name that's close to my legal name, with a beautiful meaning that suits who I am, that doesn't sound like a half-assed translation of a western name to Chinese people, and that ends in an 'n' (I love names that end in an 'n'). I don't know which of my teachers thought of that name for me, but if I find out someday, I'll have to thank them profusely.

 

I react to this name more strongly than to my legal name. It feels like my name, and not just like a name that people use to refer to me. But I can't make people who don't speak Chinese refer to me with that name, because it's really hard to pronounce and people butcher the hell out of it, and also, it wouldn't feel right to be using a Chinese name because, for one, that's awkward, and for two, I'm still white, and ya know, cultural appropriation and stuff.

 

It's 朗然 (Lǎngrán) by the way, but it's also in my profile picture, so I guess that wasn't a surprise. When I told my parents and siblings that that's my Chinese name, they were like "Long run? Well, maybe in the long run we'll get used to that name :p." My dad said: "What? Laoren?" (老人 Lǎorén = old person) and I was like "Never mind, please don't call me that 0.0" 

I haven't told them that I prefer my Chinese name over my legal name. It feels kind of disrespectful, you know? Like, " Hey, I know you spent forever reading through name-booklets to decide on a name for me, but the one my Chinese teacher came up with in 5 minutes feels more mine, even though I've only been using it for a couple of years, as opposed to the one you gave me, which I've used forever, so now I'm using that new one that you can't even pronounce, okay? Bye!" It's like telling them "Actually, you don't really know me." It's just my own brain that makes an issue out of this though. They'd be completely fine with me changing my name.

 

'Laurann' is an approximation of 朗然, but it's still too feminine for my liking. Sometimes people read it and think 'dude,' but most of the time they read it and think 'girl,' and I've kind of started to dislike it for that reason.

 

So yeah. I need to come up with something else, but no western approximation of my name will sound as mine as 朗然 does. So it's going to be kind of meh regardless. I feel like I've been spoiled with this cool-ass perfect name, and now that I have to give up on it, I don't want to settle for less anymore, so I'm kind of stuck with the legal name that I don't like at all..

 

My disconnect from my legal name has had one positive effect, I don't care when people butcher it. I studied in China for a year and met people from all over the world, and they all pronounced my name differently, however it was pronounced in their language. While other people really cared that their international friends pronounced their name right, I was more like "Oh that's how you pronounce it in Italian? Sure, call me that! Why not. I'll collect all the different versions." People would ask me "How do you pronounce your name in Dutch?" and I'd say "Just do whatever man."

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DuranDuranfan
1 hour ago, Woodworker1968 said:

Simi is also Icelandic for “telephone”, but  it recalls the word simian. Not worth the gamble.

This reminds me of those episodes of Star Trek Voyager with the EMH trying to decide on a name. 

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selecting names for children is tough too. can't avoid it. spent many hours deliberating. (well, mostly for the first one.)

for my own name change I just lopped off a bunch of letters to make a less-gendered nickname / new name, classic enby style. (my birthname / deadname is very gendered.) the nickname route made it easy to get folks to switch over, but the lack of dramatic change can also mean they don't take the gender identity seriously. (of course, many many things can mean people don't take gender identity seriously.)

my mom said she didn't like it, but she doesn't like a lot of things. oh well.

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I'm sad that I like my Aven nickname Poeci but it only really works written down, and orally it will sound weird in my language :(

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On 10/18/2019 at 3:43 AM, A Cool Fool said:

I never hated my name when I was younger, but I never felt a real connection with it (though I don't imagine that's something that all/many people necessarily feel). As I've started going by a nickname, the disconnect has gotten stronger, to the point that I've started noticing myself feeling physically uncomfortable when being referred to by my birth name. It's almost on par with how I sometimes feel when people misgender me, like someone is forcing a puzzle piece into a place it doesn't fit. 

When I think to myself, I actually find myself inserting a completely different name when self-referencing. It's a name I've liked since I was young, but it is not remotely close to my birth name. Somehow it feels better than my own name though? It's recently occurred to me that if I could completely redo my life with that different name, I would be happy about the change. Not sure what I can do with that information, but it's something I guess.

I've been dealing with this lately. 

 

For the record, I am cis-female, and I personally don't feel out of place in my gender. 

 

But my birth name, I've always kinda felt like 'well, it's a name, I guess it's mine'. I have strong preferences on nicknames of it. I cannot stand characters in shows and such that have it, because it makes me feel like it's shoved at me again. 

 

When I was 12 I created a name online, that I have used since. (I'm 30). It feels like my name. I didn't realize how strongly I felt on this until I lived with my best friend who calls me by it. Her mother does as well. It feels right. For the first time, I feel like 'yes that's my name'. I've begun looking into changing it. But it's how I reference myself, it feels like me. But since it's so different from my birth name or any name I've ever heard, I feel like I could never actually change it. Even though I'd be happier. 

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