Naming - Blog Posts

Shoutout to @robotmechagirl for naming me. I genuinely would've been nameless for like months longer without her. Also, shoutout to my coworker and best friend who has been dealing with me for 6 months of work and 4 months of being on HRT she has the patience of a saint sometimes, I swear. I appreciate yall(and everyone else whos had to put up with me throughout my transition).

I uh dont really know how to conclude this soo, mwah!(/p)

What is «AstroDezign»?

what is it ??

no, just do not think that this is somehow connected with the pseudo-science "Astrology" Why ASTRO? Because it is a reference to the stars, to space. The fact is that my birthday is April 12 - Cosmonautics Day :)

Dear nerds, geeks, and fandoms,

It's my birthday, so would you please show & tell the pets you've named after your favorite character, show, book, or game?

I have two, creatively named by my husband.

Haun, named after Huan the great Wolfhound of Middle Earth. We had to adjust the spelling because people kept calling him Juan... And Rahir, which is a rough Quenya translation of "Lost and Found". Since he was a stray, it was very fitting.

Please enjoy tummies.

Accurate

Naming characters in your books is like:

This is Mischa Ernst Townes III: I made a list of thirty-two possible names and narrowed them down through careful evaluation of which phonetic sounds and letter combinations invoked his energy, which etymologies most emulated the spirit of the character, and which names had connotations or allusions that would foreshadow or contrast his inevitable arc while simultaneously harking back to his history in an interconnected web.

OR

This is Roger Halifax it came to me in a dream.

There is no inbetween.

In my experience, there are four approaches:

Take an existing name, and translate it into a unisex or opposite-gendered equivalent. (I went from 'Lawrence' to 'Lauren'.)

Select a different - but otherwise traditional - name. (Often this is as simple as a person seeing or hearing a name and thinking "I like that; I could be a _____".)

Choose a name with symbolic connotations. (I know a devout trans girl that settled on 'Faith'; and another that chose 'Phoenix' for fairly obvious reasons.) This option appears to be particularly popular with non-binary individuals.

Create a new name from whole cloth; running letters together until something unique and lyrical emerges.

Of course, one can combine these approaches in various ways. (One girl I know chose a new first name; and then converted her original first name into a female equivalent, and made that her new middle name.)

As for suggestions? Well, that depends on what direction your child wants to go in. Do they want to retain the spirit of their current name? Then seek out other-gendered versions. Are they looking for something different? You could stroll through a baby name website together. Perhaps a more representational name? Then discuss how they see themselves and how they want others to see them.

Lastly: don't feel pressured to get this right first time. Let your child try different names on; call to them by their new name, and see how they feel. Even if you get all the way down the road to a legal name change, there's generally very little preventing you from changing it something else if needed.

(I mentioned that I went from 'Lawrence' to 'Lauren'; I skipped over the year in between I spent as 'Lawrie'. It's okay to take your time on this!)

So like, if you’re a parent whose child not only trusts you enough to discuss their trans journey egg hatchery with you, but asks for your input on their new name-

Like, that’s a big deal and you’d want to do right by them, right? So how would you go about finding/making suggestions? Aside from avoiding names prevalent in pop culture and/or that can be overtly or incidentally connected to people/things that suck.