Trans guy here. There was no masc version of my deadname, and my parents didn’t have a name picked out for if I’d been AMAB, so those routes were closed to me. I initially tried to pick something where I could keep my initials, but the only names I liked were already “in use” in my social and family circles, and it didn’t feel right.

So I looked at the popularity of my deadname in my birth year, then started from that same rank on the boy name charts for the same year and worked my way out. I found a name of very similar popularity that I really liked, and met my other self-imposed criteria (nickname I liked, no nicknames that I hated, not easily misspelled or confused with a femme name). The benefit of looking at birth year popularity ranks is that I ended up with a name that doesn’t sound “too old” or “too young” for me, which may or may not matter to other people.

My parents did something similar when they named us, so that we’d have names that were recognizable, but we wouldn’t share our name with five other kids in our class. (My mom had a very popular name for her age group and she hated it.)

For my middle name I picked a name I always loved but that I didn’t want for my first name, for practical reasons (easily misspelled, gender neutral, much more popular for younger kids than for my age group). In my area, nobody ever knows your middle name unless you go out of your way to tell them, so I let myself have more fun with it.

It’s been close to a decade and I still love both of them. I “tried it on” with friends for a few months before starting legal paperwork, and I’m glad I did. Some other names I tried out didn’t stick.

I chose my name when I was 12. I don’t remember exactly, but I hit on the name Audrey and I was like, “I really like that name”. Even back then in the year 2000, I knew I was trans, and so I decided to take the name for time being. It kinda stuck after years and years of being my true name. Unfortunately, I did not come out to anyone for over 20 years, so the only one who knew my name was Audrey was, well, me.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

Well, I knew from a story my mum told me ages ago my dad wanted us all to have biblical names, which is weird because he wasn’t religious in the traditional sense at all. He must have just liked the idea? And sure enough my assigned-at-birth name as well as my sisters names were from the bible. I wrote a list of female names from the bible that I could remember as a way of honouring my dad’s memory and one just popped out at me.

I had already picked my mums maiden name as my last name because I was changing that too, because my original last name had a glottal thing in it that always annoyed me and sort of tripped me up? And when I put them together it was so obviously … me.

Speaking to other trans and non-binary people that seems to happen a fair amount, but don’t worry if it doesn’t. Names grow on you especially with use. As it happens I got married, changed my last name and added a middle name, and I prefer this version a lot more so who knows.

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 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 :)

I didn’t really sit down and choose a name, it was given to me. Some friends started calling me by a shorter version of my deadname and I really liked the vibe of it, so I started going by it.

Everybody gather round for a real horror story: I chose mine because of Harry Potter before JKR came out as a transphobe. I already felt the books had problematic elements back when I chose my names (and the writing isn’t like AMAZING or anything), but the fandom made a LOT of things better and wrote a lot of wonderful stuff that reclaimed a bunch of things about her world (sure it was all AUs but still). It was so fun to let my mind run wild in the fandom sandbox - I felt really free.

I had already come out with my names and had been using them for years by the time JKR went all extra with the TERF bullshit. I get depressed thinking about this to this day. Lol.

I stole my name from my kindergarten girlfriend lol

Cis, just didn’t like my birth name because I don’t like the sound of it. Weirdly enough I’m fine hearing it said if you aren’t speaking to or about me. If you’re talking to or about someone else named [my birth name] it doesn’t bother me to hear the name at all.

Found my new name by going through baby name websites and writing down every name for girls that I liked. (I prefer to be very gender-conforming in my outward presentation and want my name to be so as well.) It was a very long list. Over time, I culled names from the list and ended up with two final choices. I forget how I decided between them, but what I can say is that during the entire process, I picked names based on how they sounded to me. After all, my grievance with my birth name is how it irritates me to hear it. I did not look up the meanings behind the names. They can be interesting, but my birth name had a perfectly fine meaning and that did nothing to endear me to it.