I was just watching a special on a person who is trangendered. Anyway, his name was Christian and he changed it to Christina. I was thinking if I wanted to change my gender, I would change my name to something very different. I would probably change my name to Andrew. I like that name a lot. My name doesn’t start with an A. So, my male name would be very different from my female name.
So, for the sake of this question, you are going to become the opposite gender. Pick your name. Is your name different or similar to the name you have now?
Also, I would change my last name, because many people can’t say it. No one can spell it. :mad: So, I’d be Andrew Jones.
Well I’m a crossdresser so I do have a female name. I usually use Amy, which obviously doesn’t have a male equivalent. (I have experimented in the past with Ann Marie or Connie also.) Why? I’ve never liked paired names like Sam/Samantha or Christian/Christina in everyday life so I didn’t want to pick it as my feminine name.
Hmmm…probably Stephen, which starts with the same letter as my real name but is not a “paired” name with it. If I had been born a boy, my parents would have named me Stephen so I have a connection with the name.
While I’m not going to say what my name is, I will say that I don’t like the female version of my name. I’d go with what I would have been named if I was born a girl, Briana.
Hmmm - I don’t know why (it could be the rum), but this question has really captured my imagination. As much RuPaul’s Drag Race as I’ve watched, I’ve actually never considered what my male name would be. Maybe Jared? It depends on whether I wanted an everyday name (Ben, Jared, Evan), or an more exotic name (Tristan, Sebastian, Jean-Luc). Fun to think about!
Hmmph. I don’t feel I’m at all everyday.
There isn’t really a good female version of Ben. I used to think it was unfair that my name doesn’t easily translate but since I really have no interest in creating a female identity, I’ve since realized it’s moot.
Beth, maybe. I do know what I would call myself, if I were a drag queen: Ieata Buffet.
There’s a difference between a name used by a drag queen, which is usually going to be a little over the top, maybe with a dirty pun involved, and the name a transsexual/trangendered person decides to use for the rest of his or her life. You have to consider all sorts of issues. Things like, your parents named you originally - if you are on good terms with them, do you maintain a connection to what they gave you at birth (or, as someone mentioned, ask what they would have named you as the other gender)? Also, a name change is not free, and many trans people can’t get a legal name change as quickly as they need to. If your chosen name can be seen as a shortened version of your legal name that makes it much easier to cash checks written to your new name in most cases (meaning that you don’t have to out yourself every time someone needs to cut you a check unless the situation requires it). Plus, after you have been on hormones for a while, if you do have to show your license/interact with a bank/otherwise reveal your legal/old name, people tend to sort of laugh it off if you go by something similar. You can joke that your parents “named me after my Aunt Susan, but everyone calls me Sean” or whatever. It doesn’t trigger as many questions.
Of course, if you are distanced from your folks, just dislike the sound of your given name, or have enough money to make the legal name change not an issue, you can switch it up without a worry. Just as with babies, though, these things do have cycles of popularity. For a while, it seemed like every other trans man in his 20s was named Caleb, Ethan, or Dylan.
I’ve never much liked my name; I don’t hate it or anything like that, but I just don’t like it. I’d pick a different female name; the first one that comes to mind is Alexandra, I’ve always liked that for some reason. And it’s one that I often pick for female characters in computer games, which is the closest analog I have in my life to crossdressing.
Probably a different name with the same first initial, only because the common shortened version of my name is not generally used to shorten the female equivalent of my name.
What I mean is:
If you’re ‘Chris’, then you can change your name from Christian to Christina and still be called Chris, because Chris is not a gender-specific name.
But if you’re ‘Dave’, and you change your name from David to Davina, you would probably also want people to stop calling you Dave.
I’d probably want to go with something that sounds a little like my current name, so I can remember to respond to it. Otherwise I’d be pissing people off left and right as I totally ignored them talking to me.
Either Ben or John would probably do. I’m pretty sure I would have been Jonathan if I’d been born male.
But I’m really happy with my boobs and feel no desire to hide them and act male, so the question is pretty irrelevant.
I know a trans woman, and she changed her name by simply dropping one letter.
Myself, I’d just pick something that I like, and totally unrelated. But if I wanted to keep my user name here, I guess I’d change it to Trinity Dymphma.
While it is jolly good to have a penis*, if I decided to become a woman I’d have to change my name to something entirely different because I hate the way the female equivalent of my real name sounds.
My first name doesn’t have a male counterpart and my last name is a mouthful. I’d just go with an entirely new name. Nothing crazy requiring balls or walls. Well, I physically would require balls but otherwise…
I’m not fond of my name - don’t hate it, but definitely don’t like it. I’ve often considered changing it but it hasn’t been enough of an issue to get me to make the huge amount of effort it would take.
If I changed genders I wouldn’t pick the male version of my name, which is my dad’s name–I like it better than the female version, but it’s not a favorite. I think my male name would probably be Alexander or Alex. I’ve always liked that name (I’m feeling a kinship with Der Trihs here, because I often name male game characters versions of Alexander, and my primary fiction character is named Alastair.
My name is Regina, which would make my male counterpart Reginald, which…no. Or Rex. Rex I could get behind, but I’d rather go with a name I really like and feel fits my personality.