I read it in a bad sci fi book when I was about 14, and it just stuck in my head until I finally came out. Also I like trees and gin.

I’m non-binary. My first and last names are fine. First name leans gendered but is technically unisex. I’m in the process of changing my middle name from a generic gendered one to either “Moxie” or “Miles”. This is because

• I don’t want to have to change my initials (smh)
• I feel no affinity towards my middle name
• Miles is best Sonic the Hedgehog character
• Moxie is best soda
• My middle name appears on few documents but my initial appears on many, so fewer things to update.

(Feel free to suggest other less gendered middle names that start with “M” or try to persuade me one way or another)

Just thought about different names and the one I later chose somehow just felt good

When I cracked to enby/genderfluid, I wanted a name that was genderneutral. I’m a fan of Bruce Campbell and Evil Dead, so I thought Ash(ley) worked well. Later I cracked again to transfeminine and thought “yeah, that still works.”

I stole mine from a videogame way back in highschool, 15 years before I would officially crack.

I played an RPG where the main character just resonated with me greatly. And might have also been the first female lead I’d ever played as. I held into that name as my future daughter’s name, even though I didn’t want kids. So it was an imaginary daughter.

When I came out as trans, I figured that I was that imaginary daughter I had been building in my mind all those years.

My first name (Gabriela) is just the feminine version of my deadname. I usually prefer the shortened version (Gaby) though.

My second name (Azucena) it was actually from a soap opera my mom was watching. I couldn’t care less about the show itself, but that girl was exactly the hair style and overall look I wanted to have(and to an extent, still do). But I’m leaving it as a second name because unfortunately in Puerto Rico it’s a pretty rare name (and apparently the people I’ve asked don’t like it much?).

I wanted a science-based name because I’m a little nerd lol. I considered Kelvin at some point. In the end, (and I really can’t remember why I specifically chose it) I named myself after Edmond Halley – Hal as a nickname, as a reference to HAL 9000 of course.

Honestly, I sort of regret it, because Halley isn’t as gender neutral as I thought and everyone considers it a girl name. I wish I’d been more out there and straight up decided to call myself Truck or Brick or something.

I stole my name from my kindergarten girlfriend lol

Cis-white-gay here, adopted. Changed my name at 25 to completely dissociate myself from my adoptive “family”. Went with a slightly modified version of the name on my original birth records (which I found amidst a bunch of other paperwork that really solidified my decision to leave in the first place – that is a whole other story). I am who I was born to be, not raised to be.

I didnt know where to look and didnt have any ideas, so I pulled up the list of most popular girls names from my year of birth. It was number 400 something of 500 lol.

I heard the name as a kid and I always knew it was my name internally. As a kid, I always daydreamt of a pretty girl in an overcast field with the wind blowing against her hair. I decided her name was Leyla. It wasn’t until I came out that I understood that the girl was me, and had always been me.

They’re all derivative names. My first/middle names are gender-neutral, though I use the original spelling (which implies masc).

I won’t go into detail since it’s generally not a good idea to share full names on the internet with strangers, but when I was a kid I looked up my birthname, and the meaning of my first name was “the (opposing) version of [Name]” (eg “Francine is the feminine of Frank”).

The irony of the original name was that its meaning was ‘very gender’ (eg: if Frank were to mean “buff and hairy”), so it was confusing if the opposing version’s meaning changed in any way. I took a shine to it when I was a kid, then I used the original name and its most common spelling as my new first name as an adult.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the video game series Thief, where curse words are often replaced with the word taffer. I chose it as my username, but then it stuck as my actual name when I later came out. Most people just assume I’m related to the guy from Bar Rescue and not that I’m a big fan of a stealth game from the 90s

i can go first, though again i’m not trans to be clear hahaha

for context: i’ve honestly never really liked my name, and have gone by a shortened nickname for a few years now with most of my friends. i can actually remember thinking about how i didn’t like it very much when i was probably as young as 7ish, but going by my nickname has helped me feel better about it overall in recent years.

earlier this year though, probably around january, it really just dawned on me that i don’t feel particularly connected to either my nickname or my legal name. like, even though the nick is better, it’s still just a way to try and get distance from my full name, and i realized it was a possibility for me to just pick another name altogether if i wanted to. so i started searching.

i didn’t have anything particularly in mind, and i tend to be a bit analytical with things like these, so i came up with some criteria (starting letter, syllables, nickname-able, etc), looked up baby name lists, and got to work. after looking, asking for opinions from friends, and sitting on it for a couple months, one of my friends made a suggestion for one that really “fit” me, and i’ve been pretty attached to it since- max/maxine. it’s cool, a bit masculine, has a more elegant and feminine full version, and is just generally a good fit i think.

i’ve been going by it online for a few months now and think i really like it, and would like to start going by it when i start at a new college in the fall, but am just nervous about still about if it’s really right for me or not. i’m sure it’ll be fine, but just a thought that’s been sitting in my mind awhile, making me a little anxious.

My original name has no male counterpart, so I nerded to forge something anew.

I made a large list of names of my language whose letter started with A (same letter as my old name), didn’t have a female counterpart and I liked the pronounciation. Then I risked off the names that only very old people used, which were 75% of the list. The remaining list was about eight names. “Abel” was the most common of them.

I noticed afterwards that my parents (if they weren’t transphobic cucks) would have liked this name. When I asked them how they picked my name, they said that they wanted it to start with A, be simple to write, short, with no variant spellings, beautiful, with a good meaning and not too common. Also, they’re christians.