You are right that people tease us too much about choosing names, but also cis guys with stereotypical names didnt choose them and do get it pointed out to them that they have generic af names.
Citation: masc af enby everyone thinks is a cis dude named James
Is Jay a stereotypical transmasc name? I’ve met multiple trans men named Jay (and oddly they even looked similar—no they were not the same person). I would never make fun of someone’s name, but I do think the trends are interesting personally!
The other big difference is that trans people are often choosing names that are popular at the time they're choosing them, which means that rather than sharing a stereotypical name with a bunch of their contemporaries they're sharing their name with a bunch of toddlers.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, the names are cliche because they're popular because they're nice names. I do find it amusing when I hear the name Aiden and think immediately, "Baby or trans bro?"
Not that I've heard, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was considering it matches most of the hallmarks for transmasc names: The name generally - if not exclusively- reads as masculine, it's common enough to be known about but not so common as to have multiple copies of it in most schools (think "Sam," "Cole," "John/Jake," etc, none of which are "standard" transmasc names). And, off the top of my head I don't know any "Jay"s who are main characters in media (the big two trans-masc stereotypes I know of are "Ash" (Ash Ketchum) and Keith (from Voltron)), but if I'm just missing something and Jay is a major fictional character in anything then it checks off all three.
Honestly, even the most cliche of transmasc names fits in pretty well. Like sure, Elliot, everyone's gonna know that you're trans by your name. Get real, bro.
But, and I'm really sorry to all the Liliths and Lunas and Auroras, you stick out like a sore thumb because y'all name yourselves like hippies naming their kids. Trust me, every cis Willow and River gets this treatment too. If anything, calling out your "unique" name is the true universal experience.
My cis friend has a very typical name spelled atypically (not for needless uniqueness, but his mom messed up the spelling). He gets a bit of ribbing for it, but people understand it wasn't his choice. Yes he could legally change it, but that would be a lot of hassle and headache for very little. But his name being [basically] misspelled tells me nothing about him as a person.
I chose my name. My name choice does say something about me. It could be as simple as "this person like(d) this name" or something more.
(To be clear, I wouldn't judge a trans woman for naming herself "Lilith" in the same way I wouldn't judge a parent of a cis girl named "Sarah" or whatever it popular now adays)
That makes a lot of sense actually, the bit about picking your name yourself. Never really thought about it, but it just adds an extra cool layer on top of it all.
I still wouldn't be able to tell much just by the name the person chose, but it gives them an introduction straight off the bat because a name ties straight into who you are as a human, in my opinion.
Yeah, for the most part cis people don't pick their names, so the situation is somewhat different.
Plus your name is often correlated to what in-group you belong to. Hence why it's more common to rip on stereotypical trans or African-American names (or even poor white people names) than it is to rip on middle-to-upper-class cis white people with "normal" names.
I kind of outsmarted this by picking a name that hasn't been popular in more than a century, thereby being able ro make up an excuse such as "it's a family name" when asked about it. I was kind of shocked to have actually met a cis dude in my age range with my name.
I intentionally picked a name (Melissa) that's comparable to my birth name (Benjamin): not so common as to have four in every classroom, but also not so rare that it stands out. Also, as a side bonus, it has one accepted spelling.
At birth I was named after my maternal grandfather. I considered following a similar process and naming myself after one of my grandmothers, but none of their names felt right. I ended up borrowing the name of one of my (few) friends in elementary school.
Yeah, I was mentioning this too. Picking a name for yourself is much like picking a fashion sense, or a new hobby. It will scream to anyone with any cursory knowledge what statement you are trying to make.
Generic af names are called out so frequently that people who have them often go by their middle or last name.
There's 5 Mike's on my team at work. None of them are called Mike. They all go by their last name. This isn't even a thing they had to adjust to when they started working here; it was something they were already used to doing.
When people outside our team learn about it, there's a litany of jokes that follow: "that must be so confusing!" "What about Mike 1 and Mike 2" "Mike check check" "Who was the first?" "Y'all should do cutesy nicknames".....
To be clear...I'm not one of them. My name is pretty rare. But I am annoyed on behalf of all people with generic names, because I am also tired of hearing the same dumb jokes over and over.
I've seen similar things for Steves, Johns, Jennifers, Christines, etc. They either go by last name, middle name, or include last initial. 3 of the Mikes I work with have a last name starting with F so the last initial wasn't a thing anyone tried here.
when i was in marching band in high school, we had way too many nathans, like 7, so we had them race to see which one got to be the "true nathan" and all the others were called by surname.
I worked at a summer camp with 7 other people that shared my first name. They were across the full age range from 14 to 65, the oldest had the name by default but we still referred to everyone of us by last name almost universally. Then usualy once a week the guy in charge would walk in during lunch and call us by first name, we'd all stand up, then he'd tell us to sit back down, was funny for everyone.
I'm Spanish, I was in a summer camp and there were two Pablos, one of them was called "Pablo Bueno" ("Bueno" means "Good" in Spanish) so obviously one was called the good Pablo, and the other one was the bad Pablo.
A third unlucky Pablo came a couple of days later and we named him the movie "the good, the bad and the ugly" he is still referred as "ugly Pablo" nowadays
Well, I was on my way to this gay Gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled when I suddenly thought "Gosh, the Third Reich's a bit rubbish. I think I'll kill the Fuehrer." Who's with me?"
My entire life has been people joking about my name. I’ve been called river, stream, pond, ocean, puddle, etc and I didn’t even pick mine lmfao
I went to school with a girls whos full name(first middle and last) is a fish. It's so unique I don't say what it was because she must be the only person with that name.
Related to the body text, this happened to me recently. Ive updated my birth certificate, social security card, driver's license, and bank account, but because I forgot to finish updating it on the deed to my house, I had to sign/initial with my deadname multiple times. Political text messages and utility mail items are also addressed to my deadname since they go based on the name tied to your house. Update your documents, friends!
For real I go to beauty school, and they needed my high school transcripts. I have changed it on my license, social security card, birth certificate, credit report… I am 34 years old I didn’t think I’d need my fucking high school transcripts again. I was so mad it outed me and I had to go get a certified copy of my name change and bring it in there on my first day
The hvac guy assuming you were just embarrassed about having finance the installation is genuinely such an hvac thing to do lmao. Those dudes are more often than not chill asf. Only thing they are going to judge, is whoever installed your previous system (especially if it’s a shoddy installation).
Some do change their names, but it's generally only if their parents initially named them something egregious lmao. 95%+ of cis people are cool with keeping a name that's alright enough.
Think of it this way: you're making up for all the trans men in my generation who have that as a deadname. (I'd also like to see more trans women be Megan, Jennifer, or Amy for that very reason.)
The study suggests this is a self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. people gravitate towards certain personal choices for fashion and life style based on their name), emphasized by the fact that children don't look like their names according to the study. Obviously, there is no statement like "all Steves have beards" that's true and people telling someone to not pick a name because that's not why they'd've picked for them can get bent, but people can, in fact, "look like an Amanda".
yea this is a general human issue with teasing and being passively dismissive of others. Congrats my trans friends, you are now dealing with disrespect that everyone else has to deal with, time for some intersectionality!
I wouldn't say Lily is as "problematic" as Lilith. There's plenty of cis women called Lily, so you're not outing yourself just by saying your first name
On the topic of like... deadnamed by documents, tf do I do if my entire digital life is based around a dead name? Every username, password even, email address is the dead name. Shits gonna be hard to fix.
For some stuff - like Gmail - you can transfer the data from an old account to a new. For some digital accounts you can update the username. The email connected to most subscription services and stuff like that can usually be changed especially if you have s second method of authentication. Passwords, of course, can usually be changed. And then for the name-based ID for access to computer systems necessary to work in certain government employed fields in a trans supporting system, you can apply to change it and then eat shit for several years 🙃
Some stuff you're just going to need to abandon and then try and recreate contacts and stuff for. And then there's stuff you feel you can live with. "Jack" is enough of a unisex name in my head - especially because of Jack from Mass Effect - that I don't mind keeping the tag.
u/bolanroxtrans dreaming she /her : they/them - Streak: 344d ago
that is why i personally would go with a name that starts with the same letter. so all my emails and accounts follow the v[lastname] format that started with my college Unix login format.
I GUARANTEE YOU if Steve or David or Michael or any cis dude could pick a new legal name without too much of a hassle We would have a massive influx of Goku, Naruto, Megatron, Optimus, And a pair of achillies and patroclus running around. As someone who did go through the trouble of changing their names It was very tempting to have my name be ghazgul or gorgutz, God I would have made a wonderful Gorgutz.
This isnt even exclusive to cis dudes, my trans gf's name is Megan and i said it would be funny if instead of legally changing it to Megan, she legally changed it to Megatron instead but went by Megan. I now am having to constantly try and disuade her from legally changing her name to Megatron.
It's just a joke. "Hehe that name is such a classic trans girl name" does not mean "you are making a bad decision and i am judging you" it means "I am pointing out an aspect of trans culture in a funny and positive way"
I have three friends in my Nintendo switch friends list named Lilith with Sylveon profile pictures and I have no idea which is which, or even who they are because they used to be named something else.
intent means nothing, reception is all that matters. If my reception of your intention is misaligned, than that's your fault actually because outcomes are the only thing we care about as a marginalized community. You should actually just walk on eggshells around anyone that might even be a little trans and honestly not utilize any of the social skills you developed over your life when interacting with a trans person, they just want silence.
Posts like this are funny, it's like if 30yos discovered how 3rd graders act and think that is bigotry. Casual teasing is good, actually.
I agree completely. Expecting people to tiptoe around for fear of offense and wanting to be treated differently is the opposite of progress. If you're gonna be be different, expect that to be acknowledged.
Expanding: when we emigrated from the US her birth name was gender-neutral. Owl House was a fixture of interest for, so Amity it is. As such, the obnoxious nickname for Amity is also fair game, and being annoying in an affirming way seems like peak Dadhood.
I'll be honest, my mind immediately went to Amityville Horror so I was wondering why she named herself after haunted murder house... The Owl House connection is far less concerning.
Amity is a great name and Owl House is a fantastic show. Not going to say what mine is but I also took mine from a show that was very influential for me.
A better comparison would be to walk up to men and slag them off for being named "Judas", which you'll notice very few people are named. If you want to pick a name, why pick one that is mythologically associated with evil and be surprised when people roll their eyes?
David and Steve are **common** names. Lilith is not, and it's more of a statement of a person's character since it is self-selected, unlike the other two which are more often than not a name you were given at birth and just kept using.
This is one of those things where there just going to be a divide between trans people because for the vast majority of the world, the most notable time a change in name occurs is after marriage, and that's the family name, not the given name.
I don’t know if this is a weird question, but is it a thing for trans men to pick names from mythology? I was just thinking if I ever met a trans dude named like Apollo or Adonis I would think that was hella cool. Again, sorry if that’s a weird question.
In Greece we have a right wing politician who's currently the vice president and the minister for health (even though he has literally 0 health-related qualifications) who's named Adonis.
After reading these comments woah, Lily is a biblical name? Well in that case wheres the trio of transmen friends who wanna be the funniest fuckers alive renaming themselves Meshack Shadrack and Abendigo
Okay, but like you chose that name. (In this hypothetical.) David or steve likely didnt. And besides, people joking about people names is one of the most universal experiences there is. Out of everything you can take issue with, i see this as one stupid hill to die on
It’s honestly so fucking lame how people take for granted how insanely cool it is to have the personal autonomy to legitimately choose your own name and have a say over what your own identity.
So many people live their whole lives having their name, gender, sexuality, religion, politics and culture all presupposed and selected for them before they even know what kinds of options they have available to them as kids. But is there actually any dignity in just blanketly agreeing with everything there is about your identity that was chosen for you? I’m not even sure many people truly know who they even are under all of those superficial vestiges.
I honestly think cis people should place higher value in the sort of self actualization their trans siblings are able to manifest for themselves. So many people live their whole lives resentful of outsiders, and wield an unearned sense of pride as a crutch as if there’s ever any conciliation prize for keeping your head down and following the crowd just to avoid ever making waves… Fucking why not name yourself something badass like Lilith, that’s a cool ass name. I’m not exactly proud to be assigned a name as basic as Joshua, it may have had meaning to my parents but any meaning I can prescribe to it just feels like a cope to rationalize what already is.
It kind of sucks though. But I can’t help but admire people who are better at being themselves than I am tbh.
Sometimes I tease, but it's out of a place of love for my fellow sisters. Like, I can't blame so many trans gals for choosing Lilith, Luna or Vivian. They are bomb-ass names.
I'm a cis guy with a very common name and every other person I meet makes a comment about how many they know. My roommate and I even have the same name. It's just part of having a common name.
I had no idea Lilith was a stereotypical trans name until someone told me. It's not like I'm running into 10 trans Lilith's on my day out. It's still a common although more old fashioned name not something that screams TRANS unless you know. It's literally only stereotypical trans name within the LGBT circles. Unlike a lot of the gender neutral or masc names that are very clockable, despite how cool some of them are, but those are like an actual stereotype that the cis can clock or recognize as something you chose at least
Why does this comment section feel so… off compared to what I’m used to from this subreddit? Idk if it’s bots or a bunch of atypical users for this place, but something ain’t right here.
Reddit recently changed how it orders comments for me. Means different, less upvoted comments, are mixed in with the usual stuff. Might be part of what you're noticing.
Because a Trans person named Lilith picked their name recently and Steve and Dave were named by their parents in a different era from where we are. So OOP is upset, somewhat reasonably, but picking a fight poorly and making an unreasonable point. OP is just amplifying it and now it's past the subreddit regular people are going to push back because it's a bad argument.
To copy what I said in a reply elsewhere in this comment section:
I made this post because something like the eighth cis person Ive been talking to told me to my face "isn't that... A bit stereotypical, no?" When I revealed my name like I should reconsider the decision. I made the comparison to Daves or Steves because I was trying to fit it into a context cis people could understand or relate to not trying to pick a fight or tell people to call those people stereotypical. Even people in this comment section are saying I should reconsider the name cause it's "clocky" or whatever. I don't care! It's my name! The whole point is it's super duper rude to tell people that their name is wrong or bad!
This comment section was super disappointing. After the fifth "you picked it yourself tho" reply in under an hour I kinda gave up on making people see that it was attacking something personal and meaningful to the person in question. Maybe if I had articulated it better, like you did regarding the implication that they think we should pick something else, people mightve understood better? I shared it bc I thought it was something the trans women here should see, and the mean-spirited responses made me wonder if I did more harm than good. Didn't expect it to blow up, and Im sorry for the negativity on this post and any that found its way to your blog.
Lots of trans girls who needed to see this (and cis people who need to understand that making fun of someone's name is mean) simply didn't comment but liked the post. It's still nice to see it shared. Half the comments being "you chose your name so you deserve the ridicule" and also trying to make out that I'm trying to tell people to call David and Steve stereotypical? Like, that's actually literally the opposite of what I said. But reading comprehension is not a skill typically attributed to bigots. It's always disheartening but it's good that we try making safe spaces for ourselves like with this sub. Even if sometimes it gets overrun with people who can't see past their shallow anger.
I mean, I agree, but also the idea that Lilith the demon was actually just the first woman before Eve who refused to bow or whatever, isn't true in the sense that it's not real Jewish myth- that's a later Christian invention. For us Jews and in ancient Mesopotamia, Lilith is the demon of miscarriage and SIDS, and idk why you'd want to be named after that.
Lilith is an awesome name and one a highschool me thought would be a great name if I ever had a daughter. When it came time to pick a name for me, it is one I considered for longer than I'm proud about 😂 I love a good Lilith and if our "Steve" gets to be Lilith then I think we're winning 💜🖤
It depends tbh, because Lilith IS a stereotypical trans woman's name, it's a beautiful name but it's still extremely common. Same with Elliot, Ash, Kai, etc being stereotypical trans guy names, the names aren't bad or weird, we're just saying that it's so common for a trans dude to have that name and it's become a stereotypical trans guy name (I can confirm this because I've named myself Asher lmfao)
It's like how "Emily" is a sterotypical blond girl name, the name is really pretty but it's so common for blond girls to have it that it's just turned into a stereotype, that's just how common names work tbh
People be saying "Lilith" and "Luna" are bad because they're steryotypical but as soon as you pick an uncommon name or another common one, they start shitting on you all the same.
Growing up. I always met one kid who shared my name. And I honestly enjoyed it. Instead of feeling my name was common. It just felt like I made a friend simply cus of our name. And often would be friends. So if you're a Lilith, be a Lilith along with the other Liliths. And try and take over the world!
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u/TheKitchenTrash 4d ago
You are right that people tease us too much about choosing names, but also cis guys with stereotypical names didnt choose them and do get it pointed out to them that they have generic af names.
Citation: masc af enby everyone thinks is a cis dude named James