Apr 24, 2024
#blog
This is going to disappoint a lot of people close to me, but I never liked my given name. I never liked how it sounded, nor did I like it when people used it.
It obviously means something in my native language, as does basically every name in our culture. They're supposed to represent some virtuous qualities that parents hope to see in their children.
But what use is a name if someone doesn't get to choose it? Fundamentally, names are labels. It's how someone (or indeed some brand) presents themselves. The first thing you'll know about them and the shortest possible summary of them.
So shouldn't the bearer of this clearly life-defining label spend some time really thinking about what they want to be called? Why do we make it so difficult to legally change names?
Now obviously I am going to have a lot of posts here that are specifically related to being trans, and this one is no exception, but this need not apply just to folks who want to change their gender. I recommend that everyone tries on a different name to the one they were assigned at some point in their life.
Fortunately, most contexts make it super easy to do this. I used to hate it when restaurants and cafes asked for your name when making an order, as made popular by the impersonation of a coffee shop with the green logo who should not be named for too many reasons to count. Anyway, it bugged me a lot. Why do they need to know something I'd rather not share? Can't an order number suffice? Has society become that collectively dumb that they can't memorize a number? Maybe my younger self thought that.
And then it hit me. You can, like, totally not use your name.
I know this is such a silly thing to write out now, the realization that you don't have to give these places your legal name, but taking control of that was powerful. I would actively try out different names to see how they sounded, and - more crucially - how it felt to be addressed in that way.
Indeed, when I realized I was trans, changing my name on food ordering apps was one of the first things I did. Even though I didn't pass as a woman in the slightest, it still felt liberating to try out names without judgment. And if they did judge, I could totally just say I was picking up the order on [insert a fem name here]'s behalf.
Hearing a real human address me for the very first time by the name I ultimately settled on was a seminal moment in my transition. It was a little awkward at first, but any change of this magnitude is going to be. It got to the point when one day in class, I overheard a conversation where someone who also had my new name was mentioned, and my mind actually reacted to that. So I guess there's progress.
Finding a name you like is one thing. Maybe in a few years I won't like this one. Who's to say. And, like, that's fine. Companies rebrand all the time. Your favorite YouTube channel has probably gone through a name change. And don't even get me started on the litany of online names that I used to have.
But what's clear among all this is that names are just... hard. How many times have you built the perfect character for your new work of fiction only to spend days, if not longer, deliberating on what they should be called? I'm no business person (thankfully), but I'm sure there are entire careers devoted to coming up with memorable names for companies. It's not a simple task. Even naming variables in code is hard for a lot of folks sometimes.
Describing anything or anyone in one or two concise, meaningless words abstracts away the complexity and the factors that make them unique. You're more likely to remember a friend from a few years ago for something nice they did to you or a fun memory you shared together, because that's what really matters, right?
So names suck. Some names suck more than others. But they are all a facade, a distraction from what truly makes us unique. Let us celebrate that more.