The Problem of Names
May. 8th, 2018 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
periegesisI'm going to a writing convention at the end of the month. That means I need a name. The sort that doesn't sound ridiculously pretentious when you write it on a name tag. "Sanguinifex" won't do, because it's just too edgy (rather by accident) and difficult to pronounce. "Periegesis" is similarly pretentious and hard for anyone but me to spell and pronounce, and it doesn't abbreviate well. I can't use "Chris" anymore; it's too, well, Christian for me to be comfortable with it, for several months now. (I chose it because it was gender neutral, originally, but it doesn't have a long form, which was always a problem, and then there's the etymology.) I don't really want people calling me by my birthname, because I don't want them to think I'm cis and also nobody pronounces it right; also, what if there are photos?
So I need to find another name. I've got two weeks.
What galls me is I've known I was trans for years, at this point. I should be past this whole picking out names thing by now--I'm not the type to switch names a lot. There's this sort of "your chosen name is your real name/is valid" sort of thing that goes around in mainstream trans communities, and there's nothing that addresses "what if you're wrong about what your name is, and it takes you several years to figure out"? It's weird that I feel guilty about this, because I never have about similar things, it's just that I felt so certain, once--and indeed, it suited pretty much all my current criteria except point 5, and also the minor problem of only being neutral as a diminutive, unless I spelled it in a way that looked wrong. I just feel like a should have known. And I feel even worse for being glad that financial circumstances meant that I couldn't really transition, because of the name thing, because of it eventually turning out that masculinity actually wasn't going to be the "better" option for me, because of all the reasons that cis people would use to justify mandatory gatekeeping. And I don't want to be the sort of person who has new pronouns every week or whatever, because if that persists past a few months you're just a flighty jerk, really; at a certain point one should settle on something just for decency's sake. (The idea that pronouns are supposed to be a perfect encapsulation of one's gender as opposed to merely a common placeholder that isn't wrong really irks me. I'll use what people want, because I'm not a dick, but it's linguistically stupid to try to make the language have much more than three animate pronouns. "They" for "both/neither" should be plenty, and much else is a strain on reading comprehension. I just recognize that most people with superfluous pronouns unfortunately have more gender feelings than linguistic awareness, or than a sense of looking out for nonbinary people as a whole in the long term. I don't judge unless I think someone has the linguistic education and foresight to know better, which is very seldom.)
This thing of "oh I thought it was this for five years; I was actually wrong." It's also that it will confuse all my friends (and it's hard enough to keep track of who's who on tumblr), and that some of the more ungenerous people will accuse me of accountability dodging for "being a pedophile"--aka, being a queer person who's unashamed of the word and thinks gatekeeping is suicidal and doesn't believe in censoring erotica. The Junior Log Cabin Republicans of tumblr are more than happy to take all the old libels and paint rainbow stripes on them, just to get an edge in a pointless argument or for a minor grudge, or because you wrote something and they didn't like it. It's completely fake, and they know it, but they do it because it doesn't matter if you're homophobic against a bad person, you see. And then, whatever I choose will likely become my literary name, so I'm likely to be stuck with it in some form or another, meaning it's a big choice.
But also, what if I'm wrong, again? The only thing I know about myself at this point is that nothing is certain. If there's a space between a binary, I"m probably there. I wish I didn't have to have a name, something bound to the core of my concept-self, because it eludes that, by nature. "Sanguinifex" is a mask, which is why I like it. It's also stupidly edgy (I just wanted a Dragon Age reference!) and doesn't and most people can't pronounce or spell it. It doesn't go with my last name at all. So I can't use it offline!
So I need to find another name. I've got two weeks.
- It needs to be visibly gender-neutral.
- It needs to be the right color, because synesthesia is a pain in the ass. Raspberry-jello red. That means probably starting with A, C, K, (M), R, or S. Whether any of those will work will depend on the other letters in the word, particularly vowels.
- It needs to go with my last name, which I am proud of and won't change.
- It needs to be fairly short--definitely no more than 3 syllables--or easily abbreviate to such.
- It needs to be not particularly religious, nor one of Those Names That 90% Of Trans Dudes Have. (You know the kind.)
What galls me is I've known I was trans for years, at this point. I should be past this whole picking out names thing by now--I'm not the type to switch names a lot. There's this sort of "your chosen name is your real name/is valid" sort of thing that goes around in mainstream trans communities, and there's nothing that addresses "what if you're wrong about what your name is, and it takes you several years to figure out"? It's weird that I feel guilty about this, because I never have about similar things, it's just that I felt so certain, once--and indeed, it suited pretty much all my current criteria except point 5, and also the minor problem of only being neutral as a diminutive, unless I spelled it in a way that looked wrong. I just feel like a should have known. And I feel even worse for being glad that financial circumstances meant that I couldn't really transition, because of the name thing, because of it eventually turning out that masculinity actually wasn't going to be the "better" option for me, because of all the reasons that cis people would use to justify mandatory gatekeeping. And I don't want to be the sort of person who has new pronouns every week or whatever, because if that persists past a few months you're just a flighty jerk, really; at a certain point one should settle on something just for decency's sake. (The idea that pronouns are supposed to be a perfect encapsulation of one's gender as opposed to merely a common placeholder that isn't wrong really irks me. I'll use what people want, because I'm not a dick, but it's linguistically stupid to try to make the language have much more than three animate pronouns. "They" for "both/neither" should be plenty, and much else is a strain on reading comprehension. I just recognize that most people with superfluous pronouns unfortunately have more gender feelings than linguistic awareness, or than a sense of looking out for nonbinary people as a whole in the long term. I don't judge unless I think someone has the linguistic education and foresight to know better, which is very seldom.)
This thing of "oh I thought it was this for five years; I was actually wrong." It's also that it will confuse all my friends (and it's hard enough to keep track of who's who on tumblr), and that some of the more ungenerous people will accuse me of accountability dodging for "being a pedophile"--aka, being a queer person who's unashamed of the word and thinks gatekeeping is suicidal and doesn't believe in censoring erotica. The Junior Log Cabin Republicans of tumblr are more than happy to take all the old libels and paint rainbow stripes on them, just to get an edge in a pointless argument or for a minor grudge, or because you wrote something and they didn't like it. It's completely fake, and they know it, but they do it because it doesn't matter if you're homophobic against a bad person, you see. And then, whatever I choose will likely become my literary name, so I'm likely to be stuck with it in some form or another, meaning it's a big choice.
But also, what if I'm wrong, again? The only thing I know about myself at this point is that nothing is certain. If there's a space between a binary, I"m probably there. I wish I didn't have to have a name, something bound to the core of my concept-self, because it eludes that, by nature. "Sanguinifex" is a mask, which is why I like it. It's also stupidly edgy (I just wanted a Dragon Age reference!) and doesn't and most people can't pronounce or spell it. It doesn't go with my last name at all. So I can't use it offline!
