I use a modified version of the feminine form of my given name. I spent a long time thinking about it but in the end it felt right.
Transfem
A community for transfeminine people and experiences.
This is a supportive community for all transfeminine or questioning people. Anyone is welcome to participate in this community but disrupting the safety of this space for trans feminine people is unacceptable and will result in moderator action.
Debate surrounding transgender rights or acceptance will result in an immediate ban.
- Please follow the rules of the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
- Gatekeeping will not be tolerated.
- Please be kind and respectful to all.
- Please tag NSFW topics.
- No NSFW image posts.
- Please provide content warnings where appropriate.
- Please do not repost bigoted content here.
This community is supportive of DIY HRT. Unsolicited medical advice or caution being given to people on DIY will result in moderator action.
Posters may express that they are looking for responses and support from groups with certain experiences (eg. trans people, trans people with supportive parents, trans parents.). Please respect those requests and be mindful that your experience may differ from others here.
Some helpful links:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- Trans Voice Help // A community here on blahaj.zone for voice training.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A US-based mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for gender affirming healthcare and procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
Support Hotlines:
- The Trevor Project // Web chat, phone call, and text message LGBTQ+ support hotline.
- TransLifeLine // A US/Canada LGBTQ+ phone support hotline service. The US line has Spanish support.
- LGBT Youthline.ca // A Canadian LGBT hotline support service with phone call and web chat support. (4pm - 9:30pm EST)
- 988lifeline // A US only Crisis hotline with phone call, text and web chat support. Dedicated staff for LGBTQIA+ youth 24/7 on phone service, 3pm to 2am EST for text and web chat.
not me but a high school friend transitioned lately. we all kinda knew this from high school though she hadn't come out them. friends there used to call her with a feminine name which she liked. she took that name :)
All my highschool nicknames were the product of bullying :(
oh, I'm sorry :(
Hi, I was also born in the UK in the 80s, but I don't live there any more. Did you read any Enid Blyton growing up? I always liked George (Georgina) from the Famous Five books. Perhaps shortening it to Gina instead would work for you.
How did I choose my name? Er, my wife suggested it and I thought "yup, that'll do" :3 There aren't a huge number of names that work in both English and Japanese.
Yeah, I'm not asking my partner. She'll suggest a bunch of lotr names.
My chosen name, Tess, was literally picked from a variable name from de-obfuscated Minecraft code over a decade ago. It said Tesselator tess = ...
or something like that. And I thought "that sounds neat". Some time after, I found out it's also a real name used by real people in the real world.
holy cow you brought MCP mappings into real life, the matrix is leaking
Name was honestly not that difficult in the grand scheme of things. Like yeah it took months and I was on hrt before I decided on a name but I already had an idea.
I just took my old initials and found names that came from a similar part of the world. From there I slimmed the list down based on their meanings/translations. I do think that if I had done anything different I'd have a different middle name just because the meaning is kinda an insult even if it's not directed at me. I think that takes power away from the process.
just stole it from one of my friends
poor girl is now left unnamed....
I'm half considering stealing Joanne from the f**King terf. It'd be the ultimate act of trolling.
I asked my brother what his name would be if he were a girl and he didn't have a solid answer. He then returned the question and I realised I did and I was 100% sure about it which I did not actually see coming.
Thought it would be annoying to completely change names but i also dont like the feminine versions of my name, so i just made one up.
No one can spell it proper, but i love my new name
I have yet to find a name, but I'm considering feminine or androgynous variants of my birth name that sound vaguely Japanese. I ran them by my ex and he had no thoughts, so I guess I only selected options that sound normal for a millennial.
I wanted to keep my initials for practical reasons. And when in an unrelated conversation the name Tamsin came up I was just smitten with it :)
It sounds playful, is a feminine version of my birth name and doesn’t end with an ‘a’, which for some reason is something that I find important.
My middle name is a straight up female version of the old one with zero creativity :)
Started with the name my ex think suits me. Sounded too gender neutral and common. Tried bunch of names I can think of who were my transition goals. How did I tried? Used that name on food order and also imagined how it would feel like to get referred to that name.
Didn't like any of those either so I looked up list of woman's name. And chose something unique (at least in English speaking country) and has meaning that I feel very connected to.
Take your time
I picked a name that has the same first letter as my deadname (though it’s not as dead as I’d like it to be just yet), because it’s a less common letter, and I like that. It’s also the name of my many-times great grandmother, which I think is cool. It is the first one I tried, but it’s felt right and no other names appealed to me as much, so I’m content!
I asked my parents what names they were thinking of before the genital reveal and just picked one. I think the limited choices helped me actually commit to one.
Not really an option when I'm so close to inheriting a house from a man who undoubtedly beats his meat to a picture of jk Rowling.
Oh, then just go with "Joanne" then! Easy win!
/s
I just spat coffee. But... That would be hilarious...
I also went on those "baby name by year" sites for my birth year, but I purposefully went to the 100-200ish range since I wanted a name that wouldn't stick out too much, but also wouldn't be so common I'd know or meet a bunch of other people that shared it.
I also had a few other things that would be nice but not necessary that I wanted the name to have, so when reading down the list I had a smaller number of names to consider. One just jumped out at me though, so I tried it out for a bit and ended up sticking with it.
I wanted a powerful name to strike fear in the hearts of the people that wronged me.
My girl!
Fuck yeah
Bärbel the destroyer?
I didn’t have a particularly negative connection with my given name, and I always liked the people I knew I shared it with. Some of them role models and mentors, some of them ancestors, and even the saint I shared a name with was oddly fitting, even though I’m not religious. I wanted to honor that connection while also taking the chance to reconnect with my family’s ancestry and the language of that land, on top of picking a more femme name. I started researching names from the language of my ancestors but eventually broadened my search to the geographic region as there is pretty heavy overlap between names in the languages of the region. While I was searching I happened to read a book by an author with an unusual name that looked familiar. I realized I had glanced at it in my searching and I took it as a bit of a sign. I researched the name, found it not only is explicitly the femme version of my given name, but its meaning also worked very well. On top of that I like the letters that are in it slightly more than my given name.
Sorry to never actually reveal the name. It’s odd enough I’m pretty sure with that and my post history across the fediverse you could dox me.
I'm in a similar situation. I'm keeping my name as it seems to be unisex. Searching my name on LinkedIn gives me 3 women (excluding myself), 3 men, and one unknown (no profile pic or posts/comments that reveal gender). Given that LinkedIn is gonna be very male heavy in the country that my name is most common in, I believe this actually means it is a female leaning unisex name. Not gonna say what it is as searching it on LinkedIn will def dox me given there are less than 10 ppl.
There's also a more masc version of my name (my name with the vowel at the ending cut off). Searching that on LinkedIn gives only men, with a similar number to how many there were for the fem version of the name.
The name has religious and linguistic ties to my ancestors and I'm keeping it despite being agnostic.
Side note: Some relatives call me by the more masc version as a nickname. I always used to hate it and much preferred the version that's actually on my documents. Guess it was because of how masculine it was.
After having made several hundred while in character creators I was able to choose one pretty easily.
I'd personally recommend thinking about a character that you can make yourself and want to be as this thought experiment's no different to thinking about the person you want to become rather than are🫡🏳️🌈🍀
What made you settle on your names?
I chose a name that I felt best resonated with me and screamed "Yes that's me!😉✨"
I tried a couple differant names out at the same time just using differant names in different social groups I was in. None of them really felt right until one day a new name popped in my head and immediately felt right. Told everyone later that day that that would be my name. Thinking back now, it’s weird to think I was ever called anything else.
Tried a few out before landing on my name. I went by another name for a couple months that just never really felt right. Then I found my name and every single person in my life was like "it's perfectly you". People still say that after they've known me for a while haha. I'm pretty sure I found the actual name just by scrolling through a name list. It jumped out at me right away and I was really really happy when I told my friends and they first started using the name for me.
Went for something that meant a lot to me that sounded beautiful.
Pretty much it, really.
I never changed it. Tanis back then, Tanis now.
I just.. tried a bunch. Alexandra was my first, used it for about 6 months online. Didn't like it. Too harsh. Then I tried Sarah, felt better, new test group.. but wasn't right. Unsure why, just wasn't me. Tried Amanda, and that was it.
The downside of this is you have to make disposable friend groups. I made mine on old internet kink websites, a few focused on like.. pre-written "teases". It kept things fairly transactional and anonymous so there wasn't any relationships to break, just another content creator disappearing
i went through a ton of baby name sites specifically looking for names popular in a certain time frame (since it gave me a little more euphoria like "that's who i've always been")
in the end, i went with katherine, because i loved katie but i wanted a fuller version, and elizabeth for my middle name because my mum originally had the name bethany if i was afab and i wanted to use it in my name since she was the first person i told :)
those are my two favorite names! elizabeth has so many nicknames.
Hail fellow middle-name-is-Elizabeth-haver!
hihi <3
I actually knew what my name was going to be more than a decade before I transitioned. The first time I had ever heard it I sort of latched onto it, somehow I never met anyone else with the name (it's not a particularly uncommon name) but it always stuck with me.
So when I started thinking about socially transitioning it was sort of a no-brainer, it felt like my "real" name had been there waiting for me all along. I know that must sound trite and cliche and not at all helpful but it was a really affirming moment in the process for me.
I actually always knew my name, so that came naturally. But my middle name took a lot more consideration and I ended up settling on one shared by two video game protagonists that inspire me lol.
I am no-contact with family and hated my given name, so I didn't have the option of most of the suggestions here.
I went through a list of names common in my age group and birth area and stripped out the ones I didn't want for initials. Then I bounced them off my spouse until we got a short list. I asked those who knew I was out to use them, and put them in as my preferred name for appointments.
It turns out all that work was pointless. We had a random night where we were doing something completely unrelated and my spouse said something that I misheard as my new name and it just stuck! Now my legal paperwork is done and I am just waiting for the courts to finish their side of it.
I looked up names with meanings that spoke to me, then when I had a few I asked my bestie to help me narrow them down. She also made a gender neutral nickname out of my first name, which is what I usually go by. I love that I get to use a name she picked!
You might like my middle name, it means "island goddess", but most English speaking people have no idea how to pronounce it lol
Was high, and reading the journal. Phased on the name of somebody and then choose.
It was like "Yeah... this one, I like it"
I used to use a (female) nickname for anonymity sake on the internet sometimes and it kinda grew on me...
Since I liked both that nickname and by dead name somewhat, I decided that I'd try a mix between the 2 names and it sorta worked but I was never really convinced. That was until I was going through some old google accounts of mine and noticed that I had a profile pic of a character from a game that I really liked and was incredibly similar to the mix between my nick- and dead name (and could be considered gender neutral).
The only issue was: since it's a very uncommon name, not only did no one know how to spell it, there was also a very good chance that the responsible government agency for name changing stuff would outright reject the name because for some reason you can't have a uncommon/strange name (the rules are extremely vague).
So while that game char name grew on me for a year, I basically had to come up with the name that I actually took within like 2 weeks because of other regulatory issues...
So I picked a pretty common name where I can say "oh, please use [game char name] as a nickname". Don't get me wrong, I quite like the name I took but especially with friends/family it just feels way too serious in comparison. With most people even at work I go by the game char name as a nickname tho and I love it ( ᵔ▽ᵔ)
Edit: I also thought about using the female version of my former middle name - Valentina, but I have too many bad memories of getting made fun of my former middle name... Now that I think about it tho, I might add Valentina back as a middle name in the future