a.m • A question to people who have changed their name

A question to people who have changed their name

kiriamaya:

jemimaaslana:

Your first name that is. The name that people call you.

Your reasons for changing your name are none of my business, but I’d like to hear about how you decided upon your new name.

How did you choose the new one? What mattered in your decision? What did you take into consideration when choosing? Did you ‘just’ go for a name you like? Or one you thought fit you? Did you take other people’s ideas and suggestions into account?

Yes, this is related to my post about hating my name. As if that wasn’t obvious.

So if you care to share, I’d be very glad for the input.

As my friend Elaine put it: “I didn’t chose my name; my name chose me.” The instant I heard the name Alyssa, I just knew it was my name. I did consider other alternatives, but none of them felt right the way Alyssa did.

This… probably isn’t very helpful to you. Or maybe it is. I dunno. Hopefully it at least makes sense.

I had a really difficult time picking a name. For me, it felt weird to get to choose like that. Anyway, flashback to Christmas Eve several years ago, one of maybe two times a year I actually get to see my parents, and I was still mulling over when to come out to them. My mom sort of knew already, but she had led me to believe that my father was still in the dark, and I wasn’t exactly getting super positive vibes about how a coming out speech might affect him. Turns out everyone was further ahead than anyone was willing to admit…the first gift I opened that year was this amazingly cute pair of tiny opal earrings, signed ‘love, mom and dad’. After that, coming out seemed like almost an afterthought, and I was right; “all we want is for you to be happy,” was what they both told me. They also offered to help with my coming out to the extended family, having correctly guessed that the whole process was quickly wearing on me. I accepted their offer with barely a moment’s hesitation, and to that end I invited them to meet with my therapist, figuring they might have questions and/or feel the need to express some feelings to him.

So a few days later we were all sitting in my therapist’s office. To my surprise, both demonstrated a pretty advanced understanding of trans “stuff”. My father especially shocked me; he ended up asking for and making notes on a dozen or more book titles…he was about to go under the knife for knee replacement and he wanted to spend his convalescence period educating himself. In his words, he wanted to know everything there was to know about what his child was going through. Not bad for a couple of working class northern Michigan lifers…it kind of shames me to look back and realize just how little faith I had in them.

The whole experience was overwhelming really. It’s kind of impossible to describe just how proud and excited and relieved and encouraged I was just then. But it occurred to me at some point that I didn’t have to censor myself around them anymore, that I could say or ask anything. So I asked them if they’d like to help me choose my new name. My mom replied something to the effect of, “well, don’t you think you should pick for yourself?” “I’ve tried,” I told her, “but I’d love if you two would help.” My therapist would later tell me in private he’d never seen that kind of an exchange before, and he could tell from the swiftness of her reply that my mom had given the subject some thought…almost as if she was hoping to be asked. She suggested Sabrina, and my father concurred. It was one of the names they had considered for me before I was born. There was something right about it, even down to the fact that it shared the same first letter as my birth name, and we didn’t even bother discussing different options. That was it.

I went home that evening and told my then-wife about the afternoon’s events. The first thing from her lips was, “Oh cool, you should pick a middle name that shares the same initial as your current one, then you could keep your initials just the way they are. Something like Renee…” I didn’t even hear her other suggestions, I loved Renee so much. In fact, to this day I go by Renee informally, and almost no one realizes it isn’t my first name. But I love the entirety of my name, and how I came to have it, and mostly that I can tell people my parents and my ex-wife teamed up to help me choose it. :-)