It was supposed to be my birth name, actually. The entire time my mom was pregnant, I absolutely refused to take my hands off my genitals for ultrasounds or I just kept turning, so they had no fucking clue what I was gonna be. They assumed a girl based off what the doc told them, and my dead name was kinda a last minute fill-in.

They never hid this fact, happily told me about other name choices when I asked, but Rose was always at least my dad's favorite and my mom's top "acceptable" choice. When my egg finally cracked, I tried other names but Rose just... Felt like a birthright. Like for 30+ long years there was the real me just begging for the mask to say my name. Nothing else felt like me.

I made a spreadsheet, of a bunch of random nouns I thought had name potential, and then asked my partner and friends their opinions and documented the results

Got drunk with friends and wrote down all the names that might work, and tried then one by one. Good thing the first one stuck, cause the next one was womannator 3000

Born with a unisex name, so my parents 🤷

So when I told my mum about me I wanted it to be a little of an ice-breaker for her to brainstorm a new one with me. I had some 'soft' requirements - appropriate for my age, something I could shorten and greek-ish (deadname and my sister's names both are, not like we have any familial link or anything). I'm the eldest of 2 and for years we have known her name had she been a boy but for some reason we both thought my other name was what she got called. Turns out it wasnt true and my mum said "oh no you were going to be called x". And when I heard it I realised it fulfilled all my requirements, kinda suited me and it just felt nice, like it was mine to reclaim.

(Btw, username unrelated lol)

Following this thread with interest, because I'm currently fumbling and changing it often. Can't find something I like.

I know my parents picked a female name for me (they didn't check ultrasounds before birth) but unfortunately I don't know what it was. I am really curious to know. Unfortunately I'm not able to ask them. I wonder if I can dig up some old records...

edit: I found it written in my baby book. Pretty emotional experience tbh. I'll try it out.

Read about history, and then steal the name of the most badass woman you find.

Both my sisters' names end with -ina. So I changed my name to something that also ends with -ina for consistency.

it was a joke and it stuck (it is the same as a muppet, but i am kind of a muppet so it worked)

Stole it from Lena Raine :3

Mine was picked from a character in a show who gave me so much (at the time unidentified) gender envy as a kid. I used the name in a game for a while to see if I liked people referring to me by that name and fell in love with it.

And then I picked a middle name that was more out there, but that I also liked, so if I ever wanted to change things up, I could use either.

Stole it from my second grade teacher.

So basically, I was given my name haha. With permission from me of course. But at the time when I was just becoming aware that I'm trans I met some friends on VRChat. We would regularly hangout and stuff and the topic of names came up. I told them my now dead name and instantly my friend suggested the name "Allie". So I just rolled with it and it stuck and I liked my new name. Which is strangely fitting since my avatar is part cat, like an Alley Cat haha.

So yeah! Now I go by Allie now! But I'm probably gonna just use that as a preferred nickname and when I do my name change I'll probably write down "Allison". "Allie" for short. I'm also considering changing my middle name to "Nicole". But we'll see.

I haven't done my legal name change yet.

I think it should be normal for parents who chose gendered names and have a 'boy' name and 'girl' name picked, to suggest their trans child the other name. and if the parents are good and deserve it, it should be considered.

Saying this because I named my daughter after a video game character, and if he becomes trans, I think he should consider the male character for a name... But I doubt he would want to be Jeb

I tried a few different names; most of them were derived from my original name. I ultimately decided on one that was pretty similar to my dead name.
I also realized a few months after picking my new name that it's an anagram for my mom's name. Except it has a D...

Jolyne, its Similar to my deadname and a JoJo reference

Sat idly one day, it popped in my head, I went "huh, neat" and started the paperwork.

My wife and I are one and done, very happy. We both really liked our potential daughter's name and decided I should use it :)

One day while smoking with a friend someone placed a rock in my hand and It struck me like a vision.

I’d tried out a few names at that point and none of them felt like me, then the name I chose just popped into my head and i just kinda knew immediately in that moment. Told my friends later that day and 7 years later it feels weird to think my name was ever anything else.

I did a good bit of research into the language of my ancestors, hunting for a femme version of my given name. I found one that technically belongs to the protolanguage, but liked it a lot, and as I researched more about it the meaning and origins of the name made me like it even more. It conveniently shares the same first initial so it makes dealing with government paperwork and my deadname a bit less bad, plus some of my nicknames still work.

I was thinking about Satan back then and noticed that Lucifer can be shortened to Lucy and thought that this name is actually really nice.

TLDR the reason is satanism

I had a made up name that I used online (don’t feel any particular attachment to it now), and 20 years ago the advice was to use a name in the top 10 or 20 for your birth cohort to blend in more easily, so that’s what I did. I let my parents pick my middle name, as an olive branch over transitioning; it didn’t get them to use the right name or pronouns, but I still like the name or I wouldn’t have used it.

Not trans but if I was, I'd go by the name my parents would've given me if I was born a girl. I'd recommend something else though if you have an unhealthy relationship with your parents

I was named after my grandfathers so I'll probably end up using my grandmothers' names.

It's the name of the wife of a twitch streamer I follow. It's also the name of a notorious feminist who fought for women suffrages in the 50s in my region. And it's also the name of the most beautiful woman in greek mythology 🥰

stole it from the swapnote girl cus shes cute

One is a genderbent version of my given name for my family and other situations where i need to use my government name, the other is a nickname i was given and is the one i actually use.

I made a list of names that I liked, then mentally tried them on to see what felt like it fit.

About 13 years ago when I was 13 (6 years before my egg was forcibly destroyed), I made a Mii after a Castlevania character on my 3DS and a bit later at that time I was grinding Smash Bros 3DS a ton online.

Iirc, for some reason your username online shows as whatever your Mii's name is, and being known as Shanoa just felt so right to me. So after a lot of hesitation, I decided to name my online handles that and even entered my first in-person Smash tournaments that year under the same name. 💀 I have been competing in platform fighters ever since.

Being known by most of my friends as Shanoa made it really stick with me like it was my real name and whenever I thought about living as a girl, that was the name I always wanted to go by. So after I learned I was trans, I ended up going through with it.

I'm still very early in my social transition, but it's pretty cool to think despite that most people I know irl have been calling me exclusively by my real name for the majority of my life now lol

My former partners used a nickname for me so exclusively that people we'd meet started to assume it was my name, and that's perfectly fine with me~

My name happens to be gender neutral. I kept it. Now I am invincibly undeadnameable. Like a Lich who doesn't need a soul cage.

I tried on a few, but they never felt right until I tried on the one I have now. It stuck and it just feels like "Me"

so i feel kinda cringe about this now, but i basically just picked a fem/gender neutral name that is kinda similar to my given name and then i experimented a bit with it and ended up setteling on a variation of it, that is actually the name of an object, cause i am in the long tradition of enbies with with object names :33

for other names, i just stole names/words from charecters or things that i liked the sound of >:3

Statistics. My assigned name was the 3rd most popular for my agab when I was born, so I tried on the 3rd most popular name for my actual gender, and I was like, yup, that's the one. Perfect fit.

My mom had told me from a young age, long before either of us knew, what I would've been named if I'd been a girl. She'd had names picked out for boys and girls but didn't have a born girl. I call it my "chosen given name"

My first name (Sophie) was picked by strenuously looking through the top 1,000 girl names in the US, and writing down anything that felt "right". I ended up with a short list (including Amber, Luna, Aurora, Bri, and a few others I can't remember), and I looked up the meaning and histories of each. Sophie is the French form of the Greek Sophia, which means knowledge and wisdom. Given that I'm highly autistic and have a whole damn encyclopedia of facts in my head, I felt it fit the best (and it's super cute). I was going to go with Sophia and just have Sophie as a nickname, but I liked Sophie so much that I just had to have it as my legal name. I also picked my middle and last names, though. My middle name (which I won't say as to not doxx myself) is related to my favorite wildflower, in a language of the country I wish I could immigrate to. I spent a very long time on it. My last name is a common US last name that is also from the region of that country, and I picked it mostly so I didn't have an immediately searchable name (harder to doxx/stalk me). The reason I picked a new last name was because...well, let's just say I had a horrible childhood, and want nothing to do with my family. I didn't want my name to feel like it was "owned" by them. Which is also why I didn't ask them what they would have named me if they knew I was a girl, as others here have done.

I still use my name my mom gave me at birth. Its a masc name and I'm transfem. Egg cracked like 4 years ago and I haven't had any names I feel like trying. I do sometimes use alternative feminine spellings that don't change the pronunciation (which I first used in a pokemon game like a decade before egg cracking).

Not trans but got a legal name change. My current name is my former initials.

Hentai.

It was graffitied on a bridge. I liked it so I took it.

I tried out different names in video games, mainly Fallout 4 where the robot butler Codsworth refers to a specific list of pre-recorded names. When I heard the British clanker refer to me as "Mrs. Boobie" for the first time, it really just clicked.

I dont remeber exactly where i got the idea for it, but it was decided through a discord poll lmao

I struggled for months or even years with this. Then I named a pen and paper character after June from avatar and got so used to be called June when playing, that I started to like it.

Middle name! Got lucky on that one.

Took the equivalent popular name from the year of my birth. As in second most popular boy name to second most popular girl name.

It felt correct immediately, but YMMV

I used to have to come up with a lot of names when I played DnD a while back. I'm usually good at taking in my surroundings or my existing knowledge and mash it up into something interesting.

ok so the chmod command from Linux, plus Siemens (yes, the tech/rail company) and a random suffix with vowels: Chiemyu

not my best thinking, but gets the point across and would be good for some silly character 😅

Idk, I just tried random things until it felt right and sounded cool. I love myself, Nell. I love you too babe.

On a sidenote: try googling popular dog names....

Thought about it for years, my girlfriend asks the lemmy gremlins... They recommended my Name, i loved it. (no i dont usw meow as my name...)

Not trans but I did change my last name to my mother's maiden name. Don't like my mother much either but I repeat my clan and grandfather far more than the sub-human filth that is the kin of the tainted one.

Do you ever wish to rend thine own flesh for having corrupted blood within or is that a me problem? Regardless I wish to annihilated my paternal DNA regardless of all other factors.

vivid/stasis

I used a random name generator and kept some of the ones I liked on a list! I wanted something that sounded like a name, but wasn't something you hear a lot, so I chanhed a letter and I loved it!

Then I googled it for a final check and realized it was a character in pokemon, and loved it more!

I saw it online in the profile of a human rights activist and liked the sound of it. I even used it as an alt username and character names years before coming out, so when the time came to choose a new name for myself, I knew it was the only name I could accept, and I loved it from the moment I started using it :)

I just brainstormed with my husband until something felt like it fit, using popular names from my birth year for inspiration.

I ended up with Emily for a name. I like how it sounds but also because.

• Emily Jane Brontë
• Emily the Strange (really like the vibe)
• Corpse bride.

Then I thought of Lily as a Nickname. Something the meaning of rebirth / renew (not that it's the only one) it stuck with me.

i downloaded mine from a silly pink hedgie :3

Came across a really cool musician who's name was an unusual feminization of my deadname and I liked it.

My name propably came from some anime or video game character, at least its what it associates with in my head. But when i try to find an anime or video game characters with this name, i dont find anything related. Propably a mandela effect or something i dont know.

I knew of this (fake?) character for a long time, and found out that the name suits me perfectly after i realised im trans.

HunterXHunter, Alluka was my favorite character. I'm a huge weeb if that wasn't obvious.

I let my tiktok followers pick it out in 2021. (RIP 🪦 my tiktok)

This scene

from a song

i got my forename from a not super interesting book i forgot the title of a while ago. i decided on my surname with my family (long story), ultimately took it from a modern-era historical figure known for her work with data processing. i also technically have a middle name suggested by my mother that i just put on my legal name/sex change paperwork because why not!! :)

It was the name of a saint. I'm not religious in that way but I heard the how passionate they were about what they liked. So much, in fact, that it led to their demise. Of course, I don't want that to happen to me, but I just thought it was nice.

Bonus: I got my middle name from a character in The Magnus Archives. Love that podcast.

My brother's name was masculine anyways, so he just kept it.

His best friend was expected to be a boy, so his family only had the male name for him for the first few weeks of his life. When he transitioned, he just took his original name back.

Not me but my friend likes anime, she chose the worst last name.