Open Thread: Names

If it were culturally easy (i.e., without serious hurdles in the form of social resistance and legal hoops) for you to take a new/alternate first name as one you choose (and not one chosen for you at birth), would you do so? (And feel free to share what you would pick for yourself, if you feel comfortable doing so.)

I think I might. I like my given name just fine, but it still bugs me a little that I didn't have a pick in the matter. But I can't decide what, out of a universe of options, I could settle on without feeling a certain anxiety that I might have missed a better one.

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85 comments:

Yamikuronue said...

I hate my name, but it's the one that really registers as 'mine', you know? It's like it highlights in my brain when it's called. Hence why i never changed it. With the amount of stuff I do online, I respond to 'Yami' almost the same way, but 'Yami' doesn't match my phenotype at all so it'd be taken as cultural appropriation if I changed my name to it. I'm slowly getting used to Jane Bailey, my writing psuedonym; I've considered changing my name to Jane legally, but it still doesn't feel quite right. (It'd be easy to change my first name when I go change my last name after the wedding, after all).

Anonymous said...

yes change name no don't know what to.

Will Wildman said...

I'm pretty happy with my name at this point (though as folks already know, I generally use my middle name online and my first name in facespace). I'm content to give cool names to people I invent rather than relabel myself.

I liked the naming system that showed up in a spinoff standalone from the Animorphs series of YA/SF books, The Ellimist Chronicles. Among the Ketran species, your 'given' name was your address, and would change if you moved, your 'chosen' name was self-determined (apparently in adulthood) and it wasn't clear whether it could be changed, and anyone who was active in their psychic internet would pick an online handle as well. So it was generally expected that everyone would have 2-3 different names for different purposes. (What all of this boils down to in the end is that the godlike transcendant being who has occasionally helped the heroes throughout the series was actually just a pretty random nerd with ridiculous luck mixed into his tragedies, and the name the heroes know him by is like a superpowered human going to an alien world and saying 'And you may call me... xXxDarkNinjaWarriorxXx'.)

Brin Bellway said...

If it were culturally easy (i.e., without serious hurdles in the form of social resistance and legal hoops) for you to take a new/alternate first name as one you choose (and not one chosen for you at birth), would you do so?

In some ways it is and I have. Nobody else named me Brin. I did that.

As for offline, I don't think I could be bothered to get everyone to call me something else even if they were all agreeable. My name does sound a bit childish to me, but for some reason only when applied to other people. Extrapolating from my perception to think that it sounds childish to those for whom I am "other people" would probably just lead me astray like other such extrapolations.

But I can't decide what, out of a universe of options, I could settle on without feeling a certain anxiety that I might have missed a better one.

You ever meet someone who seemed to you to have a jarringly unfitting name at first, but over time as you get to know them your mental connotations of the name change to fit so it seems perfect? I can't think of any time when such situations haven't ended up like that for me, though sometimes it takes longer than others. I guess names are a bit like shoes that way. (Well, there was that one pair of shoes that were still uncomfortable even after time for them to adjust. And the boots where much of the adjusting was done by my feet rather than the boots. Maybe the shoe metaphor doesn't lead to good places after all.)

Smilodon said...

I don't like my offline name at all. The name is from a woman who is in a story about a man, and her main characteristics are "being so beautiful that he falls in love with her, later dying in childbirth." I much prefer my middle name, Emily, which probably has a story as well, but not one that I know.

You're right about names growing to fit people, Brin. When I tell people that I dislike my name, they tell me it's the only name they could imagine for me, and nothing else would fit. Which is odd in my mind, since I don't think it fits at all. It's just easier to keep it than changing it.

chris the cynic said...

I'm pretty good with Chris, I could do without the -topher hanging off the end of it.

I have nothing against tophers in general -they sound like adorable little furry burrowing animals or something- it's just that the one attached to my name has never really felt like it belonged there to me. I've always been Chris, I intend to remain that way in the future, the topher is just an unnecessary thing that hardly ever gets mentioned anyway.

I was named after a song and a person. (First name song, middle name person) The song is a good, the person is too, I have no problem with either.

It is the case that the world seems to have a lot of Chrises in it and that can get confusing, but it's not annoying enough for me to feel the need for a new name.

chris the cynic said...

But I can't decide what, out of a universe of options, I could settle on without feeling a certain anxiety that I might have missed a better one.

For the record, that's how I feel about almost everything. It's part of why I hate making choices. I get into that mode and just stop, even if the question is, "Where would you like to eat?"

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, I am SO MUCH THAT WAY. You're in my head again.

I like multiple choices alright: "Do you want Olive Garden or Red Lobster?" but open choices cause me so much anxiety. Too many options! :(

redcrow said...

In a heartbeat. Both first name and last name. Without any regrets. Would go for something more gender-neutral, if it was at all possible (a gendered language isn't fun - non-standart and un-declineable last names can be found yet, but full first names are only either male or female).

JonathanPelikan said...

At this point? Probably not, really. I've gone so long with my name, and Jonathan means something vaguely good, so eh. Even my last name, which is what I got the shit over through primary education? At this point, I just stopped giving a frak about it. It's my name. It'll be on my world-famous book covers and it'll be spoken with reverence at the sci-fi conventions by people dressed as my characters some day, Gods-damnit.

(Which, incidentally, that last thing is my official Goal in Life, as in, once that happens in reality, I can move on to any possible next lives in peace.)

Brin Bellway said...

*sigh* I miss Olive Garden. They had such lovely breadsticks. Being now older and somewhat more adventurous in my eating, I could probably even get something for the main course that isn't simply olive-oiled pasta I could easily make myself.

(They do have Red Lobster here (why Red Lobster and not Olive Garden, I don't know; they're the same company, according to the gift cards), but we've never been. I'm not sure why. Long ago it was because they had nothing I wanted, but I've since discovered a love of salmon. Possibly my brother would still have trouble finding something appealing.)

Rainicorn said...

I'm actually going through this exact thing right now. The place where I'm at w/r/t my gender identity at the moment, I can't really deal with having a female first name, but I've been having a hard time thinking of a new name - all the unisex/gender-neutral names I really like are already taken by people around me (that's the only problem with living in a really queer community!). So, knowing that I want to change my name, one of my friends has started calling me MAX POWER, from an episode of The Simpsons. Another friend addressed me as Max yesterday, and I couldn't stop grinning. I think I'm going to try to make this happen.

Lonespark said...

Well, I did. It's right there beside my icon.

Which, I guess, means no. I've wanted other names and gotten them, and I use each in its appropriate place.

For a while I wanted my legal name not to be only the nickname form, and I changed it on my driver's license. But it wasn't really me, I guess. It was too late to get used to it, not worth a real legal change...

Lonespark said...

OMG Chris and Ana get out of my head.

I can never pick meals in restaurants (well, rarely), especially if I'm hungry, and I've had multiple dramatic experiences of trying to meet a bunch of criteria regarding price, lack of meat, fat content, etc., and somehow ending up with something met very few the conditions I wanted and wasn't good and aaaaargh. I haaaaate making decisions under pressure, and I can put pressure on myself at a moment's notice, so...

Xtina Schelin said...

My legal first name is 'Christina'. If I weren't so worried about being employable, I would no lie change it to 'Xtina'.

I have nothing in particular against my last name, apart from how it's difficult for others to spell/pronounce. It doesn't bother me, though, so whatevs.

Ana Mardoll said...

I don't eat seafood, but they have a Cajun Chicken Pasta that is quite delightful. Alfredo sauce over linguine noodles. Spicy, though, but not too much so. :)

depizan said...

When I was sixteen I did change my legal name from the birth name that had never fit me (and came with a hyphenated last name that inconveniently didn't fit on forms) to the name that is now mine. Of course there were fewer hoops back then, since it was before 9/11.

As I traded a clearly gendered name for a gender neutral name, I really doubt the first name my parents chose would ever have grown on me. Hell, half the time I go by Mac because my first name is crazy common (not why I chose it).

Heqit said...

Oh yes, yes, I would. In fact, I've been semi-seriously toying with legally changing my first name for a few years now. I only haven't done it because it would be a big pain, and something of a slap to my parents, and...and...it somehow feels like making a change like that just because *I* want it would be Silly and I would feel like people would think I'm high-maintenance and illogical and affected. (Note: this is not grounded in objective fact and reflects more of my opinion of where my own gratification should fit into my hierarchy of Stuff To Do (i.e., at the bottom, b/c What About Other People???) than it does anything about whether other people should change their names for any or no reason. tl;dr: I haz issues.)

Anyway: I am a cis woman living in the US, and my first name is Robin. I've always haaaaaaaaaaaaaaated it. In part, at least, because I've always struggled with being fatter than I want to be and "Robin" is just such a round, hearty, earthy, solid word with all those big bouncy letters and a very Anglo-Saxon/Germanic finality to it, and I feel like it fits everything that I most dislike about myself physically TOO well. I am not pale and slender and ethereal and graceful and named something that flows, like Isabella or Cecilia or Marianna or, if I'm going to channel Anne Shirley this hard, Cordelia. : ) I'm thick and round and rough and red and homey and homely...like a Robin. Ugh. In addition to all of that baggage, "Robin" tends to get nicknamed "Rob," which I do NOT like, or "Bobbi/y/ie" which is even worse. It's mostly a woman's name in the US, but I still get addressed as "Mr. Robin Lastname" or "Dear Sir" quite a bit in letters and emails, which irks me.

My father's name is the common male name that Robin is a nickname for, and since I was supposed to be my parents' last child and my older sibling is also female, I think my name was meant to be a kind of "we wanted a boy to name Junior but got a girl so have almost the same name anyway" compromise. Which would almost be OK - I'm close to my Dad - but then my younger brother was born and WAS named after my father, so now there are three of us in the family with practically the same name and UGH again. And then there was going through school being called "Robin Red Breast" (have I mentioned that I'm large, meaning also big-busted, and also tend to flush/sweat/get warm easily? AAAAAACK.) and "Rockin' Robin" - mockingly, since I was the only fifth-grader listening to Beethoven and I did not rock in any way - and having that Jingle Bells parody about Robin laying an egg sung at me. Which, lots of people get teased about their names and it could have been much worse, but all just adds to my lifelong sense that I. Do. Not. Like. My. Name.

And I have thought of what I would change it to: Rosalind. It's pretty, it goes well with my middle name and last name, it has literary connections (Shakespeare! Yay!), it preserves the same opening sound (so it would be easy for me to get used to answering to it), it shortens easily to a cool nickname (Roz - with a 'z'!), and it's uncommon without being too difficult to spell or pronounce, and is a fairly classic name that's traditional for people of my ethnic heritage - it wouldn't be appropriative at all.

I wonder if I should try to change it after all. I wonder how upset my parents would be. I wonder how difficult it would be to get people to accept it, and accept that I'd changed my name for "no good reason." I wish I could convince myself that it wouldn't be totally self-absorbed and frivolous to change my name just because I think another name would be prettier.

Jeez, what a wall of text. Thanks for letting me ramble, fellow Rambleites, and for putting up the topic, Ana.

Redwood Rhiadra said...

My sister *did* halfway change her name when she turned 18 - she didn't like the "boring" spelling, so she actually went to the courts and got a legal change to a more exotic spelling (still pronounced the same way).

As for myself, I'm OK with my name right now. But there have been times in my life when I've thought about changing it.

Maartje said...

I used to hate my name growing up. Mostly because like half the words in the Dutch language rhyme with Maartje and bullies in school would launch into these long free-form poems about how horrible I was.

I wanted to change it to something else, but I couldn't figure out what. Something that didn't rhyme with anything annoying, at least.

In university I joined a student's association where people with duplicate names got a nickname. Since there already was another Maartje, I became Wolf. And I LOVED it. Still like it when people call me that, and I haven't been a member for six years now. Not really something I would feel comfy changing my name to.

If I were a boy and lived in an English-speaking country, I would want to be called Matthew.

Gelliebean said...

For several years when I was a kid, I was absolutely convinced that Amythest was the best name in the whole wide world, and that I would someday change my name to Amythest. I'm sure the fact that "The Ordinary Princess" was my favorite book at the time had nothing at all to do with that. :-D

I seem to have grown into my name, though, and it's really hard now to imagine trading it for anything else. Angela Marie sounds really pretty to me. If I were to change anything, I might formally change to the nickname my parents gave me, Gela, as I feel even more comfortable with that... but although it would have sounded all right with my maiden name it doesn't flow at all and sounds really awkward with my husband's last name.

depizan said...

I still get addressed as "Mr. Robin Lastname" or "Dear Sir" quite a bit in letters and emails, which irks me.

Heh. My dad has a not-clearly-gendered name and my mom goes by a not-clearly-gendered nickname. They also each kept their last name when they married. They have the world's easiest time identifying telemarketers.

Will Wildman said...

My second middle name is my mother's family name, Gough ('goff', probably meaning 'smith'). Every single family member with it can rattle off an amazing list of manglings thereof.

Cousin walks into her dad's place of business. "I'm looking for Mr Gough's office?" Receptionist explains it's pronounced 'gow'. "Oh my gosh! I've been saying my last name wrong this WHOLE TIME?"

My parents continue to receive calls and junk mail seeking Mr or Mrs Gouge.

There's also some kind of inherent refusal to believe that my last name could be what it is either - people keep swapping it for 'Willderman'.

Anton_Mates said...

I'm pretty happy with my name; it's nice to have three different branches of my ethnic ancestry covered at the same time. For general use I switched over to my middle name in second grade, because most of my friends could either spell "Exu" correctly or say it correctly, but not both. But now I write papers under my full name because I figure it's more memorable--I've never had a colleague say "Oh, sorry, I was thinking of a different Exu Anton Mates." (99% of the time they're not thinking of me either, but I'm being optimistic here.)

Loquat said...

I got a couple of different alternate name when studying Chinese - there are so many sound combinations in English that Mandarin Chinese doesn't have that transliterations of western names frequently turn out ludicrous (My first-year textbook featured a recurring western-student character surnamed Bulang, which was apparently a transliteration of Brown.)

My real first name is Rachel*.
- My first-year Chinese teacher named me Pei Li - she decided long ago transliteration produced terrible results, and would give her students real Chinese names loosely based on actual names, influenced by personalities.
- When I went to China for a summer study program, I put down Pei Li but it apparently either got lost along the way or some bureaucrat decided I needed to use the "official" transliteration, which was Lei Chie'er. So that was the name on the student list, and there was no persuading the instructors to call me anything else.
- And a "Your Name in Chinese!" card that my aunt bought me rendered it Hui Tsao.

Naturally, when I decided to use a Chinese name for my main character in an Asian MMO, I picked a name that's totally unrelated to any of the above. And after over a year playing that game and getting used to being addressed by that name and diminutives of it, I was all set to move to a shiny new MMO and re-create that character with that name... but then wound up primarily playing an alt with a totally different name and playstyle, so now everyone calls me by that name instead.

*To more directly address the substance of the OP, I'm fine with my first name. It's my last name I really dislike. And my husband's last name is even worse, so that's no help.

redsixwing said...

My last name is superficially similar to the name of a beer, so I get called "Killian" a lot. Nope, try again. You dropped a whole syllable there, buster.

I once met a boy who resembled me physically, played the flute (just as I did, at the time) at a similar level of skill, had similar tastes in everything we talked about, and had a masculized version of my name.

I've seriously considered changing my name to that version a few times.

Randy Kay said...

Amusingly enough, I know the textbooks you're talking about, as they were used in my high school for Mandarin. Did your course of study include the tapes that went with the books? We always thought that the man reading the numbers in English sounded like he'd previously done voice acting for porn...

Randy Kay said...

My given name comes from Shakespeare, and although there are heroines of Shakespeare whom I like much better, I quite like my first name. In some of my groups of friends, though, I go by the nickname you see right there next to my icon.

I do get irritated sometimes because people will tell me that I have two first names, which ticks me off; my surname (not the one I use here, as this is linked with my FB) was a surname for hundreds of years before anyone used it as a first name. It probably wouldn't get on my nerves as much if it weren't for the fact that I seem to hear it dozens of times per year.

When I was younger, I gave myself additional middle names. I would simply tell people that I had these extra ones that, legally, I did not. But I don't do that anymore, nor do I feel a need to; I'm happy with my full name. I won't be changing my surname is I ever get married.

Loquat said...

My first-year Chinese class was long enough ago that I have no memory of whether we used tapes or not. We certainly didn't get our own copies of any tapes.

I do have a funny story about language tapes in China, though - while I was over there, I got recruited to help with English tapes for Chinese students, and for reasons unknown they had me (middle American accent) reading dialogues with a British guy. Who had the kind of accent where TH becomes F/V (" my brother's birthday party" -> "my bruvveh's bihfday pahty"). I wish I knew if that ever got actually used to teach anyone.

Dav said...

My first name is actually pretty good - distinct, easy to spell, and rare enough that I don't run into many others. In middle school/high school, I liked Kiara, and I still like the name, but it's not me. It would be nice to have one of those names with a hundred nicknames - Elizabeth's have it easy - but whatever.

In other words, go my parents.

Sherry Hintze said...

Mostly, I'm fine with my names, though if I'd known I was going to be getting divorced, I might have changed back to my original last name before I went back to college. Now, I'd like to use my original last name, but my second degree and most of my work experience are under my married last name and I worry that changing would just create a big ball of confusion. (My original degree is under my original name, but most employers are acclimated to the idea that many women change their names when they get married and I don't think that would be as much of an issue. "I was this-name, married and took that-name, and now I'm this-name again" seems a little too convoluted.)

I like my first name okay. I've never really found another that I felt would suit me better. However, in college I joined the Society for Creative Anachronism and renamed myself a variant of a traditional name which was immediately shortened. By the time I met my husband (through the SCA, actually) I was mostly going by that name socially. I moved to where he lived, his family and friends got to know me by that name, and now I think some of them hardly know what my given name is.

And then I joined Second Life and neither my given first name nor my chosen hm... use-name? nickname?... were available, so I picked a new name. Usually only people who know me in Second Life call me that, though, and I don't really see any of them in the physical world. I hardly ever go there any more.

Sorry - a lot of text to say that I'm not inherently opposed to changing my name, but haven't really found one worth the bother and don't really have any plans in that direction.

Laiima said...

If it were culturally easy to pick a different first name, I would've done so for the *first* time many years ago. And I would have done so *multiple times* since then.

I have tried, repeatedly, to learn to like my first name, but I just *don't*. No matter how many new stories I tell myself about what I would like it to mean, I get hung up on what it *does* mean.

When I start my new business, I'm going to drop my first name entirely, and just go by my last name. I can do that because I'm the only person in the world with this last name, and it is one that I created myself so it is quite meaningful.

And now, on to read the rest of the comments!

Timothy (TRiG) said...

I've never even considered changing my name. I even use it online (Timothy Richard Green: TRiG). Clear enough. On forums and such I usually go by just TRiG or TRiG_Ireland. I use the Timothy (TRiG) name on blogs, because the first blog I started commenting on was by someone who already knew me as TRiG.

The name has spread. One family I know primarily in real life picked up the TRiG thing from Facebook and now usually call me by that name. I like it, actually.

And then there's the different names I'm called in different places. Always the full Timothy with my family and my childhood friends, Tim in work, Timmy to my college classmates and my last set of housemates. I'm fussy in writing: I want the full Timothy (and it annoys me that my work e-mail goes out with my name listed as "Tim Green"). In speech I don't care a hoot.

TRiG.

Gelliebean said...

Bleh - I consistently mis-type "Amethyst." Please substitute the correction, if you don't mind; I can't edit it.

Laiima said...

@Gelliebean, when I read your comment I just assumed the character's name was spelled unusually. Kinda disappointed now, :-/

Maartje said...

Me too! "I'm Amythest; my friends call me Amy."

theKatriarch said...

I kind of already did this, although not legally. Everybody calls me Kate. But my actual legal first name is not one for which Kate is a generally-accepted nickname. I never really felt comfortable with the name my parents gave me. It just never really felt like me. I was kind of on a quest to figure out some variation of it that didn't feel wrong and nothing was working. One day when I was about twelve my mom mentioned that before they settled on my name she had considered naming me Katherine, "and we'd call you Kate," and it just kind of clicked for me so I started using it. I haven't really considered changing it legally, although my fiance suggested that I'll have a good opportunity to do so when we get married. I'm not going to, though. I kind of like having a distinction between the officially-existing person and the real one. My legal name is like my alter ego who only exists on government documents. Plus I don't want to have to get a bunch of new documents like a new passport and all that business.

Ben Reis said...

I'm ok with my name. It's not great, but it's alright, and there aren't many names that flow well with my surname. If I ever really wanted to, I might switch to Alan or something.

What annoys me more is Google (with which I post here now) and their "real names only" policy. On the internet, I am supposed to be "unbeliever536". That is the name that I have. In meatspace, I go by the name on the birth certificate, but online I have a different name. I don't want a handle for anonymity (not that there's anything wrong with anonymity, I'm just lucky enough not to feel a need for it), I want a handle because that handle is part of who I am online. It's also kind of irritating because I had just settled into a handle I liked.

chris the cynic said...

If we're talking about last names and pronunciation, mine is Witham. First syllable "With", as in the word it looks like, second syllable like more like the "em" in "them" than "am" but if you say With-am you get pretty close anyway. Almost everyone's first attempt: Wit-ham.

A few are more creative, sometimes to the point that I can't see how they get there from the letters available, but mostly it's been constantly dealing with Wit-ham my whole life.

Randy Kay said...

We didn't have the tapes ourselves, either, although I think that only made the entire thing funnier, as the tapes were played to the entire classroom.

Smilodon said...

Oh my goodness someone else in the world read that book! I absolutely loved it, and I still read it when it's a "read a children's book" day.

depizan said...

The first syllable of my mom's last name is "Hell," pronounced like the place with the fire and brimstone. When we lived in Iowa, people insisted on trying to pronounce it "Heel." Because it's better to mispronounce someone's name than have to say... *lowers voice to a whisper* the bad place.

Silver Adept said...

I would certainly consider it, although I don't necessarily have a replacement name picked out. The name I have does suit my person, and I like its current shortened form (but not the further shortened form that some people take, mistaking the already short form from the fuller one).

I think, though, it would probably reflect some of my symbols and colors and the like so that it would be a meaningful name. It would take some time. Maybe I would change the middle name to reflect that.

Cupcakedoll said...

I named myself after my doll. Mostly because I could get it as a gmail address without having to add a bunch of numbers, but it's also nice in a more nebulous way, making my online persona perhaps more girly, fluffy and friendly than my real life personality.

My real name is Judith, which for a long time I hated for its clunky sound. In high school I renamed myself something more melodic and feminine, in a desperate attempt to get out of my own skin. It didn't work; I remained stubbornly myself but passage of time eventually made my self easier to live with. Then later I decided I like 'Judith' after all because it sounds like an author's name so I switched back to using that. This results in the occasional confusion when friends who know me by different names meet each other.

I'm also a Wiccan and an anime fan, so I've got a couple of magical names and a probably-incorrect Japanese name. Sprouting names seems to be an occupational hazard of both Wicca and geekdom.

These days whenever a name catches my fancy I just give it to a character.

★☆ keri ☆★ said...

THE ORDINARY PRINCESS!!!!!!!

I went through the SAME thing with the name "Amethyst"! I actually created my own pretend princess name JUST IN CASE based on that book, which is kind embarrassing now? but I was eleven so... (it was initialized to KEMA LERANE (pronounced like Lorraine) because I thought it was clever)

Oh man I need to go read that book again. It was kind of amazing.

Lonespark said...

Oh, Judith is a very nice name. I wonder why I never thought of that when we were trying to name YuleBaby. Is it Biblical? (Maybe that's why?)

★☆ keri ☆★ said...

@ Kate - My name is the same way. Keri isn't really an accepted nickname for Kimberly, but it's close enough that most people just figure there's an interesting story or mispronunciation in my infancy, until I explain.

I never did like my given name. I think when I was very young, my mother called me by both first and middle, and then it eventually became just the first name, and then people started shrinking it to Kim... because my mom says I was a toddler the first time I insisted that everyone call me by something else (my middle name, but how would I have known it that young?)... and when I started school, I tried to get people to call me by all sorts of nicknames, but nothing took. It was always my full name or "Kim" which I loathe. And then the teachers would make me read out loud whenever a character named "Kim" was in the reading texts, and wouldn't you know back in the '80s and '90s trying to be politically correct, the Kim in the texts was always a boy, which led to a lot of teasing from classmates...

Anyway, Keri actually comes from and RPG when I was 13, as the nickname for one of my characters. I liked it a lot and most of my social circle used it (including my IRL best friends, since we all played the game together), so I just perpetuated it. When I went to college and left all my history behind, it's how I introduced myself. And now it's my professional name, just not the legal one. I like that since I use the legal name for bills and whatnot, and Keri for social stuff, it's easier to figure out where junkmail is coming from, or spam phone calls. Also, having this second usename kind of feels like a protection against creeps on the street? it's a layer of obfuscation so they can't track me down.

One of the places I go for lunch a lot, the owner can't remember my name without my nametag, so he calls me Katie, and it's close enough. I've actually started to grow fond of it, and might adopt it if I need another alias in the future. I need to find a more gender neutral one, though. Half the time, I feel like I'm the only person who thinks of my name that way, though I like Keri because it sounds like Cary or Kerry just as much as Carrie or Kari.

I love hearing about other people's names and how people choose their names, and the stories behind them. It's so interesting! I'm also a firm believer in the idea that names are fluid and no one needs to stick to one name for their entire life if it doesn't feel right (well, duh). Names are attached to identity, and we're not the same people at 30 as we are at 15 or at 55!

Randy Kay said...

Its more accurate to call Judith a Hebrew name, although it does appear twice in the Bible, albeit depending upon which canon you are operating within (for Protestants, it only appears once). One of them is simply the wife of a another figure, whereas the other is actually pretty badass. This Judith goes to the camp of her people's enemies, tricks them into thinking she'll give them info about her people, and then decapitates their general when he's drunk. She did so because she was tired of the inaction on the part of the leadership of the Israelites. Her actions allow them to defeat the enemy.

My degree is in Religion, hence my ability to speak to this query.

Asha said...

I read "The Ordinary Princess," too. Loved it. That, along with the Enchanted Forest Chronicles convinced me that being a princess didn't have to suck. Then I dived into Tamora Pierce and never looked back.

As for my name, I've got mixed feelings on it. My first name is very common and was the most popular the year I was born (and my sister's name was the same) but I like the meaning, which is 'foresight.' Although until a few years ago I found so many variations on that meaning I had no idea if that was it or not. *shrugs* My last name, Cooley, is one that I was teased for. Gotta love being called "Koolaid." More than it was not the right name than anything else, though. Later I found out that the given name version means "Hound of Ulster," which is pretty cool in my opinion. I've gone by my middle name, for variety, and never quite got into it. However, I'm just about as comfortable with my online handles (after lots of experimenting) as my given name. Of course, Asha is the name of my hideous Mary Sue I created in 6th grade. (Comes from "Asha'man" in the Wheel of Time series.) But I still like how that name sounds.

Do I feel these names suit me? Not in particular. I get called all sorts of things besides my name. Usually some variant of "Melissa" due to people telling me I look like a Melissa. That, along with people coming up and randomly shaking my hand because I look like someone they previously worked with... I'm okay with my name not suiting me much. ^_^

I think its interesting that people want gender neutral names, but it is mostly people I perceive as being female wanting them. Are there any guys here who would want to have a more feminine sounding name?

Aidan Bird said...

I'd love to change my name. Back when I was a kid, I did some research and found a name I could use for gaming - kinda like a name that was safe for me, and I'd picked myself: Aidan. It's what I go by now for the most part, though, I haven't ever changed it officially.... mostly because I don't want to be pigeon-holed. Nor have people try to force me into one gender or the other. Changing my name to a gender neutral name would be nice, but it seems that even Aidan - a name I researched as being held by girls and boys has had a resurgence in the past seven years as only a boy name. So I've felt lately that even my nickname is now being co-opted by forces outside my control.

So even though I like it, I know people will see it and gender me however they feel like it without ever seeing me. Our society has taught us that in order to interact with someone you must assess their gender. I prefer to interact with people as they are and let them reveal their gender to me on their timing, but alas, society tries hard to stomp that idea out of existence. Names often feel like another way of imprisoning someone, especially if you have no control over your own name. You hear yourself called something enough, you just start to take it on in your identity, even if it doesn't feel right to you. Then when you are faced with that choice to finally be able to choose your own name, you're left with conflicted feelings of how it will affect your identity, the people around you, and what the consequences of that decision could be. It makes me wonder what society would be like if kids were allowed to find their own names, instead of having other people thrust it on them without their consent.

I... guess I rambled a bit much there. Your question really got me thinking.

Aidan Bird said...

I should clarify this is just how I experience names. I do not wish to make this sound like this is how everyone experiences it.

swanblood said...

I have had some times where I wanted to change my name, but in the end I couldn't find one that I liked, and I have grown to quite like the name I have. It seems to be made only of sounds that non-Japanese speakers can't pronounce, and so no one ever says it right, but I like what it means and I like how it sounds when I make it shorter, so, mostly I go by this short version (Tsu) online. I have tried to have other online names but they don't feel right to me... "swanblood" is my blog name really not a "me" name.

Arresi said...

My mother named me after her favorite bicycle, which was stolen when she was a girl and never recovered. This has gone a long way towards consoling me for the lack of good nicknames. (It's such a good line, and who can resist feeling like a character in a novel for a few seconds?)

Oddly enough, whenever the subject of alternate names has come up, Mary Anne is usually suggested for me. I say oddly because I share a birthday and apparently a personality with my mom's old best friend, who was named Mary Anne.

chris the cynic said...

Completely random. I was in a cemetery the other day (two actually, but I'm only going to talk about the one), where my mother's father's side of the family is buried. Every time I go there I'm struck by one of the names.

All of the other first names seem fairly normal, for a given local value of normal, then there's Bronislaw. Now that is a fun sounding name, or at least a fun looking one. Where I come from spelling is no indication, though that's for last names really. (There's a region where everyone has old fashioned French names, as pronounced with woodsy American accents. Apparently the advice to phone bankers is, "You will fail, just apologize.")

And apparently, its the first name of the current president of Poland, so I have a feeling I know his national origins, though there are only so many option's on my mother's father's side anyway.

For no real reason, I want to write a story with a generic and privileged American, whose family has been in the country for generations, whose first name is Bronislaw. And that fact is never commented on. No idea what the story would actually be about.

Jeldaly said...

Ooh, Rosalind is so pretty! (Actually, I've always loved Robin, too, but whatevs)

Jeldaly said...

Can't go wrong with something as cool as Erasmus. Like, that's the best name in the world, everyone go home now, it's done. Congratulations to your brother on picking such a kick-ass middle name!

redcrow said...

Judging by spelling, yes, Polish origins are most likely. Pretty much everywhere else it's "Bronislav" (or even "Branislav").
Pronounces the same way, anyway.

Brin Bellway said...

First syllable "With", as in the word it looks like, second syllable like more like the "em" in "them" than "am" but if you say With-am you get pretty close anyway. Almost everyone's first attempt: Wit-ham.

Oh good, I guessed right. "Wit-ham" hadn't even occurred to me.

Though I would still end up pronouncing it wrong, as I can't tell the difference between "f" and soft "th". I don't know if I'm physically capable of speaking both phonemes, because without the feedback on whether I'm doing it right I end up wif them bowf as "f". (Mom still tells stories about the time some of the Girl Scouts made fun of me for it. It confused me greatly, as they just started laughing and repeating "month" in a mocking tone for no apparent reason.)

I'd be doing my best, at least.

chris the cynic said...

Honestly any scale of voiced to unvoiced th would sound like my name to me, it just might seem like you were placing a strange emphasis on it depending on where on the scale it fell. And Wifam I'd probably catch as referring to me a lot faster than Wit-ham cause it at least sounds similar.

depizan said...

I think its interesting that people want gender neutral names, but it is mostly people I perceive as being female wanting them. Are there any guys here who would want to have a more feminine sounding name?

One reason I wanted a gender neutral name is that I don't perceive myself as female, regardless of what my genetics say. Now, I do feel slightly more male than female, but I can't help wondering what my answer to your question would've been if I had been born with the other equipment and given some over the top macho name like... ah... I don't know Duke or Spike or something. (Not that my birth name was over the top feminine, just... really obviously female. Which doesn't work so well for someone who feels like they're in drag if they wear a skirt, you know?)

redcrow said...

I don't perceive myself as either female *or* male. And "gender-neutral name" doesn't necessarily mean "more masculine-sounding".
Unlike depizan's birth name, mine *is* "over the top feminine", even though it's a female form of a male name. I'd want a name that screams neither "I'm a girl!!!" nor "I'm a boy!!!"

Anton_Mates said...

Thanks! I just like that he wanted to honor two different Darwins.

Ice said...

I like my name just fine (it's a perfectly ordinary name that was common for females born in the early 80s) but sometimes I really want a boy's name. Not for any particular reason, just because I love the thought of girls with boy name. I remember reading Sideways Stories from Wayside School, and one of the characters was a boy named Nancy. It just is, and he hated it, but I would love to have a name like James or Jackson or Andrew or Michael*, and not have a reason. I think Just Because is a good enough reason for me.

* or William or Nathaniel or Bartholomew or Abraham.

chris the cynic said...

What I remember from that story is that he didn't know his best friend's name, and she didn't know his, because they always called each other, "You," and that rang so true to me. It takes me so long to learn the names of people even if I talk to them a lot because when you're talking to someone you don't use their name, you never hear their name, it's just, "You," and, "I/me" so it's easy not to learn the name.

Ice said...

Oh yeah, and didn't the friend (a girl) have a boy name? They may have decided to switch names, or I may have made that up I'm not sure...

chris the cynic said...

You remember correctly, so when they finally learn each other's names they decide to switch, then everyone decides to switch names but for everyone else it was novelty and soon forgotten, for them it was a permanent switch. Though even afterwards they just called each other, "you."

Ice said...

And yet I can't remember the girl's name, only the boy named Nancy lol

chris the cynic said...

I think it started with an M, maybe.

Ice said...

MAC!*

*yes, I just read through the entire Wikipedia article on it to find her name. I am not ashamed.

Amaryllis said...

Oh, The Ordinary Princess! Yes, I remember that one fondly too.

I thought my name was boring, when I was young. Well, it is, if "common" is the same thing as "boring." I used to image all sorts of alternatives, usually based on whatever I was reading at the time, but now I can't remember what any of them were.

I've had my name too long to want to change it. And there are advantages to "common." Mary is such a common name that it has no particular associations-- beyond the obvious, or course -- or else, it's got so many that no particular one dominates.

My grandmother was named Stella, or so I thought. It wasn't until she died that I found out that her baptismal name was Stanislawa. I don't know whether she changed it legally, or whether she just made everyone call her Stella out of sheer force of personality.

I met a young family today with children named Alastair (as in Mad-Eye Moody), and Cleric (as is, something I didn't recognize). And Arwen, as in Evenstar. No doubt where those parents' interests lie, and at least their kids won't be able to complain about "boring."

Asha said...

Ah, I hadn't thought of it that way. The joys of privilege. At the time, I was thinking of the trend of male names that end in a vowel sound like Courtney or Ashley being used more and more often for women over time. My apologies. :/ My thought was how it was interesting how male names were often adopted by women, but not the other way around. I've never met a cis-gendered man named Jennifer, for instance.

Ana Mardoll said...

Yep. That's institutionalized misogyny for you: once a name has girl cooties, no one wants it for their son because they believe he'll be bullied.

I once sat in astonishment as a man ranted to me that girls "kept taking all the good names". Beyond the whole they-don't-have-a-choice-in-the-matter thing, I wanted to encourage him to reclaim whatever he thought sounded nice. But, you know, that would require blaming the patriarchy, not baby girls named Bobbie.

chris the cynic said...

Interesting thing about the name Bobbie that has nothing to do with what you're talking about.

My father is a Bob junior, so to distinguish him from Bob (sr) they called him Bobbie. When my aunt changed her name* (from Alice) she changed it to Bobbie. This caused no end to confusion.

Of course the other side of my family has Little Fabian. Now Little Fabian was named after his father Andy, but you can't have two Andys living in one house, so they called him by his middle name which was after his uncle Fabian. But you can't just call him "Fabian" because Fabian didn't up and disappear once someone was named after him, thus: Little Fabian.

Little Fabian is of my mother's generation, I think Fabian died before I ever had a chance to meet him. I was an adult before I learned that Little Fabian's name was Andy. It came as a surprise to me.


I've probably told at least one of these stories here before.

-

*The only two members of that family to change their names were the gay ones, which led to me being asked if changing one's name is some sort of "gay thing" which, one, no. Two, if it were why would I know any better than the person asking who was, as I recall, one of my parents?

My sister notes that my Aunt changed her name to the feminine form of my father's name, my uncle changed his name to a masculine form of my mother's name (sort of). She seems to believe that there is some unseen significance to this fact.

Asha said...

What I'm curious about is what could be done to change it? Other than giving more boys feminine sounding names? Picking names that have no particular connotation? Women's names being devalued is like how a lot of what is traditionally "women's work" being undervalued. *shrugs* Does anyone else feel that way? You can't have equality until both sets of skills and names are equal?

J_Enigma32 said...

I don't think I would. I like the irony of it.
See, I'm an atheist, but my name is Joshua*

*for those who don't know, Joshua comes from the Hebrew Yehoshua. Yehoshua, when in Greek, becomes Iesous. That is, Jesus. So I'm an atheist named after (the son of) God.

depizan said...

I think it goes the other way. Until women are valued equally, things that are traditionally considered feminine or women only will be devalued.

Silver Adept said...

I'm inclined to agree with depizan here. You can bring the skills and names up, and in lots of places, the skills are already on par. Yet we still, here in the United States, pay women less for their work, and traditionally female professions are some of the worst paid professions in the country. Despite being some of the most important ones. It will take more than just bringing the skills up and naming more men with feminine-sounding names - it will take a mental shift.

Ana Mardoll said...

Thirding Depizan; until institutionalized misogyny is seriously challenged and broken, *anything* with "girl cooties" on it is going to be devalued.

If we magically swapped out all cismale coal miners with cisfemale workers and/or QUILTBAG people (misogyny and homophobia have some overlap, though the two are still different things and there can be homophobic women and misogynistic gay men, for example), then I imagine that in a generation or less, coal mining would be seen as "girl work" and something that Real Men would never be caught doing, much like, say, nursing or kindergarten teaching is now. Unfortunately.

The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. :/

Asha said...

Ah. >_< Over-simplistic of me, I guess. I just wish that all work could be valued because it needed to be done, instead of who does it. It bothers me when girly stuff is devalued by other women, too.

Asha said...

In other words, yes, I see your point. >_<

Silver Adept said...

@Asha - we all oversimplify at some point - without that ability, we couldn't function. We're just all in the business of finding which ones are mostly accurate.

Asha said...

I think I had been trying to explain why women things were undervalued, and trying to conceive of ways that could be reversed. *shrugs* Men want the high prestige jobs, seemed logical to assign more prestige to jobs that are traditionally feminine. One thing I remember someone mentioning, I think it was one this board, was that tomboys and boyish activities are usually given more social prestige than traditionally feminine ones, even by other women. Hence my extrapolation. Then I overlook the obvious. This is why I could never explain how I got the answer in most of my math classes. (My answers were 90% correct, usually. I'm not bad at math, I just couldn't explain how I did it.)

Slightly off-topic; I took a college course during my undergrad called Race, Class, and Gender, and we studied masculinity as the 'unusual' gender as opposed to the feminine. I thought this was fascinating, and it made me profoundly grateful I was female. The way being male was presented sounded so lonely and miserable, because it was a constant contest for dominance and who could perform masculinity the best. I honestly wish I had done better in that one, but I was having a mental breakdown at the time I had it. >_<

Ben Reis said...

@Chris, in relation to Fabian:

My step-mother is from Puerto Rico, and she has a lot of family who moved from there around when she did. One uncle of hers grew up with the name Norbert. He liked being Norbert; certainly he liked it well enough to name his son Norbert, jr (usually just called Junior). However, one day, when he had reached the appropriate age, he decided to retire. Now, when he was born, you didn't get the birth certificate at the hospital, at least not in Puerto Rico. You had to go down to the town hall.* When Junior's father was born, nobody wanted to go, so they sent down a drunken uncle who was too far gone to care. Unfortunately, when he arrived at the town hall, this uncle could not remember the name that had been chosen for the baby. Of course, something had to go on the birth certificate. You can't just take it home and finish it later. So, years later, Norbert attempted to retire, only to discover that the name associated with his social security number was, in fact, Angelo.

*This also caused problems for my step-mother's mother, whose birth certificate was issued several months after she was born, resulting in a delayed retirement.

Smilodon said...

My grandmother worked as a bookkeeper before she was married. She told me that keeping track of the accounts at large stores was at one point work for a "bookkeeper" and at one point work for a "accountant". (I forget which one was first, and which one replaced the other). Women were bookkeepers, paid poorly, and let go when they go married. Men were accountants, paid well, and it was considered a job that could support a family. So female tasks are undervalued, not because of any value in the work, but purely because they're done by females.

I loved the idea in Lois McMaster Bujuld's book about a planet made up purely of homosexual men (babies were grown in vitro, which was par for the course in the entire universe) that childrearing was considered entirely differently, since there was no unpaid workforce to rely on to do it.

Rakka said...

I tried to add my normal callsign "Rakka" as a third forename. No luck - it's already someone's last name, and apparently you can't introduce a new forename that is already a last name. Booyah. Rakka is a northern dialect word meaning a rocky plateau. It was first my online name but as I was in a social group where people know each other's IRC nicks better than realnames, it took off as a name that I always use with older friends and in non-officional circumstances.

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