Q:
I’m a fifteen year old trans guy, like any trans person I’ve gone through a few names. However, when I came out I was using a more androgynous name since at the time I identified as genderfluid and now that name doesn’t work for me anymore. I have a new name that I’ve been using for over a year now and I’m pretty set on it, but the problem is basically everyone in my life calls me the previous name and has for years so I feel like it’s too late to change. My mum and sister have finally started calling me the name after all this time and everyone at school only knows me as the name. Other trans students at school have changed their names and no one has minded, but I can’t help but feel like a burden. How do I tell people I’ve changed my name? And how do I not feel like a burden for it?
A:
Hey there, fellow name deliberator. You know, when I picked out my new name, I made whole lists and prioritized them in order by lots of different criteria until I picked one. It was a close tie between River and Summer.
Names are important to us, and the only thing that equals that importance is having others acknowledge them. You’re seeing first-hand just that transition is as much a social process as it is personal. Sure, the most important decisions about our transition should belong to us, but we’re still dependent on everyone around us to get us through. I’m glad to see you growing into your personal understanding of gender and making changes along the way. That’s the most literal meaning of a ‘transition’.
When it comes to your name change, I don’t think you’re wrong to be a little apprehensive. People in our lives take different amounts of time to come around. Even the supportive ones need an adjustment period. But there’s a big difference between letting people take things at their pace and suppressing your growth out of fear.
I’ll say it simply: wanting to change your name now after people have adjusted will not make you a burden. Nor are you banned from doing so after people have already settled into an existing name. Transition never really ends. Yes, trans people will make it to a point where we feel complete, but that’s not the end of a transition. Even after completion, we still need to maintain it. Your discomfort about your current name isn’t a sign that you should stop at this point. It should be a sign to make a new adjustment to bring you happiness.
Besides being trans, being an adolescent is a story of life changes and new adjustments. I’m sure you have firsthand working knowledge about how adolescence changes everything. But I have to bring it back to that point about this being a social process. Your family and others around you are also learning and changing in your adolescence. How they respond to these years of your life will reflect on all of you. It’s less a story of you making changes and meeting consequences and more about change and new knowledge flowing between everyone in your life at the same time.
I get that you’ve got nerves asking people to pick up what they’re used to and changing it again. But you’ve had to do the most frightening and high-stakes version of that yourself already. The least people can do is meet you halfway. It’s actually encouraging to hear that your family’s settled into a name change once already. It means they’re open to the idea of change and transition, even if they handle things at a slower pace than you. It’s been four years since I told my elderly parents about my trans self and they still don’t get the name down perfectly. They usually get it right, but habits stick hard. I’m also not mad when they get it wrong either because I know just how many rigid belief systems they had to dismantle to support me.
The bottom line is that the people who are already supportive of you (even the slowpokes) should still be present for you. One more change added to the pile you’re going through in adolescence shouldn’t bring the house down. If it does, then those people weren’t really supporting who you are, they were compromising with you in the hopes that you’d stop. That’s not the support we offer to our loved ones, that’s tolerance we extend to irritating housepets. You deserve better than that and it won’t be your fault if they choose not to keep up.
As to how you tell people you’ve changed your name… you do the same thing you did last time you changed it. I don’t know what you did, but it clearly worked well enough if people are using it. You’ll pick through your memories of how you brought it up that time. You’ll work through the cringe moments where it could have been done better and set aside the things that turned out to be successful. Then you give thought to how the situation and people involved have changed and make a few small adjustments to your plan. Maybe a certain person needs a different venue. Maybe you need to pick a time when your mum or sister aren’t stressed to bring it up. But pick a scenario that works and commit to it.
The same goes for people at school and social circles. If you have a circle of supportive, queer-aligned friends, that’s your first introduction. Tell them you’re making an adjustment and they should understand. Use that opportunity to build support and confidence in your new name. Tell them your plans to introduce it to others and hear out their feedback. If it all sounds good to you, talk to the next person. Then the next.
Like all of us, you’ll have to occasionally correct people during the settling in period. I’m sure you have a good gauge of when someone makes an honest mistake while adjusting to change versus when someone is being malicious. The difference between those two is like a neon light in their body language. Be prepared to gently correct and forgive people’s honest mistakes, and stand your ground when people try to drag you backwards.
There’s another thing that’s as true for transition as leadership elsewhere in life: your confidence comes first. Once you start this name change (and I think you’re ready to), you must commit to it as long as you still want it. If others see that your decision is immovable, they’ll be nudged into agreement after a while. If others see that you’re not even sure about your decision, they’ll start doubting it. If you believe in your right to choose a path forward, you’ll never feel like a burden. If you start doubting whether the path is right, the anxiety and inadequacy will leak into your life again.
So what I’m saying is, it’s your transition and you’re allowed to take it wherever you want. You already have support in different parts of your life, which is good. If that support is genuine, they’ll be around when you adjust your name again, even if they take time to come around. You just have to commit when you’re ready and take it forward one person at a time. I’m sure you’ll manage.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
Loved this gentle yet firm advice <3 Also LW, I am twice your age and have also changed my name multiple times and I'm thinking of changing it again, and a friend of mine just changed his name a second time at age 36! You're not alone in this.
This comment has been removed as it is in violation of Autostraddle’s Comment Policy. Repeat or egregious offenders will be banned.
What the fuck? He realized he’s a boy and wants a boy’s name after sitting on it for a year because he didn’t want to bother anyone, this is a specifically considerate and non-entitled teen! If he’d changed his name when he identified as a girl to a different girls’ name, would you think he was supposed to go around named Lily or Sue for the sake of being taken seriously? Because if there’s any visual ambiguity, the name he already has is going to have the same effect.
Do you usually make a hobby out of being unpleasant to children? Or only when the children are trans?
This crypto-TERF comment still hasn’t been removed even though I wrote to you about it. You also didn’t reply that you disagreed with me and were choosing not to remove it, or that you thought I was interpreting it incorrectly or anything like that. You just did nothing. If you are going to spotlight young people, you have the duty to babysit the situation a little and make sure no one shows up to be terrible. No wonder it’s basically common knowledge that the people who run this site do not give a fuck about the community apart from the pageviews.
It’s been deleted now!! That comment really was shady lol, glad they got rid of it eventually ._.
I don’t think anyone who accepts you as a trans guy would have a problem with this. The other commenter is a dickhead who definitely doesn’t approve of you being a trans guy in the first place, and that’s the only kind of person who would think it’s wrong for trans people to update their names when they realize they’re a different kind of trans. I can’t say nobody’s going to be slightly annoyed at having to change what they’re doing, but if they support you, they would want you to do this even if it’s slightly annoying.
I feel like explaining your feelings to your loved ones will also help you feel less like a burden, including your feelings that you didn’t want to be inconvenient. You picked a name that was both a girl’s and boy’s name, because you felt like both a girl and a boy. Now you feel like a boy and not a girl, and you want a boy’s name that isn’t also a girl’s name. You wanted to be happy with the name you had, but it didn’t work out. Realizing you’re not a girl is as big a deal as realizing you are a boy, and it’s okay if that part of the process changes how you relate to things.
It might also help if you can explain some of this in terms of how your name affects how you’re perceived by others, rather than only focusing on your internal experiences. Some cis people care more about “other people just think I’m a girl with that name and don’t even know I’m going for something else” than “it makes me feel weird and dysphoric” because they don’t understand dysphoria about gender but do understand making choices to affect how they’re perceived by people.
Also, think about it realistically. You’re not going to keep going by this name for the rest of your life just to not inconvenience anyone, so they’re going to have to get used to a new name for you eventually. It’ll be better if they don’t have time to get more used to the old name than they currently are. You’re doing them a favor by switching in a timely way.
If and only if you still like your old name apart from that you would like to have a boy’s name, consider keeping it as a middle name or something and letting people use it as a nickname for you (don’t do this if you don’t actually want to, it won’t work out and you’ll end up resenting your loved ones for doing a thing you told them was fine).
Just wanted to say to the letter writer that while your feelings are understandable, this is really not a big ask for your loved ones. I’m cis and so many of the trans people I know went through multiple names before they found the one that stuck. You don’t have to give explanations; just know you have a right to make this change and give everyone the update.
Good luck! We’re rooting for you here.