Well, I kept on running through names to see which rolled off the tongue and gave me euphoria to hear. First tried to go with Kaela…then that felt…not quite enough. So, I went to Mikaela. Ended up with a long-winded explanation with my friend group that I’m just the Sword in the Stone(the object) personified due to the meaning of my chosen name as a whole.

Ultimately, the name is up to you…but, personally, my only advice is to find one that seems like it fits you like a glove.

I just wanted a name that works in both my native languages, ideally english too, without being butchered by local accents and dialects. That narrowed it down a lot. Thankfully that small selection had a name I really like, and cheekily signing an email with it just to see how it feels reinforced my choice^^

Also, if the name Eva just clicks for you, that’s great :D It’s a lovely name on its own, and your lore behind it is the cherry on top, making that choice a million times cooler^^

I named myself after my video game toon name and a character in a movie from my childhood. Use the name that sparks joy. If it gives you flutters when you are called it, thats the one

At some point in high school, before I was even considering that I might be trans, I just thought about how it was a cute name. It stuck in my head for a reason I couldn’t figure out for like 4 years after that, until the reason slapped itself in my face and I started transitioning.

I chose a name that means the same thing as my birth name, but in a different language (old English -> Norwegian). I asked my mom what my name would have been if I had been born a girl and took that first name as my middle name.

However i feel a little wierd about picking my name based on a tv show.

Most parents do it for their kids too anyway, and trans people all over pick names from their favorite videogame all the time! Just pick whatever feels right for you.

I tried to find names with ties to my old name or personal significance, but none of them felt right. So I looked through a list of names online, and my name jumped out at me.

If your name feels right, then it’s right :)

I just liked potato girl

I’ve known others who have used characters from shows, it’s not uncommon

Hi, I’m Ead! My 1.0 name came from the Old English Ead gar Ead meaning happy or fruitful, and Gar meaning Spear. So I cut off the spear.

I picked my name when I was trying to name a character in a story I was writing. It ended up being a really nice name, so I said “Screw it, that’s my name now. I’ll just rename the character.”

Also, plenty of people are named after characters from TV shows. My dead name was from a TV show apparently, but I dunno which one. In the end, even if it wasn’t a common thing, if you like the name, use it. It’s better than settling for another name you don’t like as much and having to live with it when all your documents get changed.

on a similar note, how many of y’all picked or are thinking of choosing a name that may not align with your culture traditionally?

I’m having a little dilemma about it.

I cracked first to genderfluid and wanted a neutral name that leaned femme. I heard the name Ashley one day and thought it was perfect. There was a boy named Ashley in my highschool, and Evil Dead (with Bruce Campbell as Ashley “Ash” J. Williams) is one of my favorite movies. It still worked after I cracked some more and left the masc days behind, so I kept it.

My partner and my favorite season was Autumn and felt like “guess I’ll be an Autumn then 😁”

I picked a new full name, meaning that, in addition to me changing the given portion (first and middle), I changed my last name as well.

As the screen name shows, my first name is Angel, and my middle name is Jamie.

I picked Angel not out of any particular funny story. Even before I realized I was trans, I had resentment to the name I was given at birth, and I wanted to pick one I’d rather be called in more casual instances. Just out of nowhere, on a whim, my mind comes up with “Angel”, admiring it in how it sounds, looks, and what it feels like when it is applied to me as a name. I requested my friends to start calling me that in school, and I introduced myself as such wherever applicable. When teachers called my legal name in attendance, I’d just kindly let them know “I go by Angel as a nickname. Thanks.”, and people got pretty damn used to it. The only real goofy thing about the name for me is that I’ve always been very uncomfortable with religion due to being raised in a really strict Catholic household, but that wasn’t really some kind of intentional irony for the lulz. I just love the way the name sounds.

When I was around 17, I accepted myself as trans, but I was under the impression that I was a binary trans woman initially, so I set on changing my name to “Angela”. This was, however, because I knew very little about non-binary people and didn’t think the term could be applicable to me. Once I got to a point of being further educated on enbies, I started identifying as non-binary around the age of 20 and subsequently went back to Angel to have a name that came off as more neutral.

I ended up picking my middle name a bit afterwards though. When I thought I was a binary trans woman, the plan was to name myself “Angela Jacqueline” as my first and middle, and I was going to keep my birth surname as well. I decided that Jacqueline was too feminine for it to be suitable as a middle name when it came to the kind of gendering I desired, but I wanted to keep the initials of “A. J.” because, at that point, people in my friend circles usually either called me “Angel” or simply “A. J.”, as I wasn’t fond of going by Angela because I didn’t have a feminine presentation at the time.

I thought of merely condensing it down to Jackie to make it more neutral, but it didn’t stick too well for me, so I went with Jamie instead which made etymological sense because Jacqueline technically, by origin of the name in meaning, serves as a feminine version of James whereas I saw Jamie as the neutral counterpart of those two.

As far as the surname goes, I decided to change that once I got a clear idea that I had to distance myself from my blood relatives who effectively disowned me. Not only that, but the surname I was born with is really foreign and hard to pronounce for a lot of legal and professional administrations, and I also wanted to give a sense of spicy individuality to my whole name, having all three pieces of it represent me and no one else I’m tied to in particular.

After thinking everything through, I picked a new surname that starts with a J, which I found fitting because of how used I got to being called “A. J.” at times. In order to still keep somewhat of a cultural connection, I picked a surname that is still very common in the native country of my folks. The surname itself can also be a first name, but it usually serves as a diminutive of longer names rather than a legal name on its own. As a diminutive, it is typically seen as gender-neutral though, and it’s also a name I absolutely am in love with, but I didn’t want to have it in the given name slot because, legally speaking, it’s pretty much entirely masculine (it’s really only gender-neutral as a diminutive), so after checking all these boxes:

☑ 1. It starts with a J.

☑ 2. It’s common as a surname in my parent’s native country.

☑ 3. It’s a gender-neutral name that I love to the point of having considered it as a given name.

☑ 4. It’s mostly masculine when it is a legal given name, but fortunately and with point #2 considered, I was able to circumvent any worries about this by putting it in the slot of my surname, as surnames are typically not gendered.

☑ 5. It just sounds damn good!

The idea is that I really don’t have a given [first and middle] and a surname [last] portion anymore. I now just see myself as having three given names that were given to me from none other than myself, but no one else would interpret it that way legally speaking, so it all worked out in the end.

Also, I’m a musician, and in my stage presence, I typically am known by my full name [first, middle, and last] entirely, in a Maynard James Keenan kind of fashion. Haha!