I looked for astronomy-related names, and ended up choosing the name of an asteroid ((2) Pallas)

Someone in my high school had the name and I really liked it. So I used it after we all graduated so it wouldn’t be weird. I actually had picked a different name at first just because I didn’t want to come off weird or creepy before we would never see each other again. It is a pretty uncommon name.

Oh great question! I always say everyone should consider whether they might like to change their name - i hear so often people saying they can’t or don’t have a reason, and you don’t need one!

I took my grandmother’s first name cos she’s real special to me, and took my second from my favourite comic book character at the time 😅 but they sound great together!

I stole my name from my kindergarten girlfriend lol

My parents were supportive, so I wanted to include them since in a way I would be taking away that moment that they named their child. I asked my mom for the list of baby girl names she’d had for me and picked my favourite from them. That way she still had chosen my true name and I also got to choose one that fit me very well.

I mostly just had some rules for names I wanted to avoid: names of people I knew personally, names that sound weird/unusual in english or swedish (where I’m from).

I considered a bunch of names via the usual methods like baby name lists and random name generators but didn’t find one that felt right for me, until one day one just occured to me

I am cis, but my given name was very aged for my generation and grandmotherly which made me self-conscious as a kid.

When I decided to ditch my name, first I tried using my middle name, but that starts with a different letter and it turns out my brain tunes that out entirely if someone that I wasn’t already listening to calls it out. I had to already be engaged in conversation with someone to respond to it, which doesn’t work great if someone across the room calls out your name to try to show you something cool. My parents never did the full name scolding so I literally almost never have heard my middle name spoken aloud. My dad even thought I had my deceased sister’s middle name the last time I can remember middle names coming up in discussion.

I gave up on the name change for a couple of years, but in high school I decided to give something else a shot. I started using my first initial, but spelled phonetically, for example: K spelled as Kay or L as Elle. That was the solution I needed. If someone shouts it from across the room, my brain alerts just like with my full first name. It’s simple, but it works. I’ve stuck with it for 23 years now.

I highly recommend picking something that has a starting sound similar to your current name so your subconscious brain will still pick up on it, otherwise your friends and family will be shouting your new name over and over to get your attention while you are completely oblivious. My kid is trans and I am going through this now from the opposite end of calling the new name out repeatedly with no response because he also picked a name with no similarity to his given name.

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’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)

I really wanted a name that starts with the letter ‘M’ because it just felt right. I then looked up “nonbinary/genderneutral names that start with the letter M” I found one with a slight association with my deadname

It’s a gender-neutral variation of my birth name. I’m a simple person.

The story of how I got my name was both interesting and mundane.

I played a videogame named Stardew Valley and created a female character there. I don’t really think about it much when choosing her name, I just wanted a plant-related feminine name so I chose Jasmine.

Many weeks later, my egg cracked and I randomly chose Jasmine as my new name. Later that day, I realized that the name was the same as my Stardew character.

My deadname started with an “m” so I just started going by “em”, which was also one of the gender neutral pronouns floating around at the time, and it just kinda stuck. Using it makes me feel agender euphoria :)

its funny, I go by pixel which I didn’t pick with the intent of it becoming my name but when you’re in gaming spaces for long enough your tag kinda becomes your name, as it were? Like I still use my “real” name in my day-to-day but just about everyone just calls me pixel outside of my family or very very long-time friends, and it’s “weird” enough that it kinda reads as an enby name in the first place 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.