On Names

The pratice of naming your child as an infant with the idea that they'll go by some form of that name their entire life is kind of absurd. Being trans and having been given a name that has very binary/female conotations at birth, my opinion of this practice is, of course, biased. But what happens to so many trans people here is only an extreme example.

What would happen if it were the social standard to name oneself once they were old enough? It seems like the names of people who do so in this society have names more specific to themselves since the factor of "but what if the other children tease them?" and just the general parental lack of knowledge of who the person being named are no longer issues. Not that we should just not give children names or call them all "[surname] number x" or something like that. Just that maybe the names given to babies shouldn't be regarded as permanent. Otherwise, you get adults with names that say more about their parents and a time period the individual barely remembers (if at all) than about the individual themself. Not to say there aren't plenty of people where birthnames suit them well--hell, the connotations of names can change depending on the individuals who carry them.

As for me, it's not like I hate my birth name. I works, the connotation of it is just misleading about who I am as an individual. I'm still figuring out how to deal with this. Right now, I have two spellings for my birth name--the legal one, and the vaguely-masculine-looking one that I put on homework and use with family and school. "Adryrn" was just a screen name at first, but it became a thing people actually called me when I started meeting up with people I first met online. Even so, it's an informal name--it'd be weird to see it on homework assignments, or even Facebook (let alone my drivers' license.) Even if I did change my name, I wouldn't want to take my birth name off my birth certificate--it's still something I used to go by. I can't make that un-happen, nor would I want to--it was just a different stage of my life. It's fine that I was a little girl with a girly name when I was younger--the problem is when people extend those qualities to who I am now.

So, I have two names--one for personal/informal situations, and one for legal/academic/family/business situations. The fun overlap-y bit of this is friends I made because of school (which is the majority of them, because my activites pretty much are my social life--I've just recently started to ask these people to call me "Adryrn", and I think I'll continue doing that when I hang out with people outside an academic context.) More complicated than I'd like it to be, but not impossibly confusing.

There is an upside to not going by my birthname--employers will have a very difficult time Googling me >D. It helps that there's a pretty well-known costume person with the same name. I can have my non-professional online presence and post pretty much whatever I want, largely without worrying about it biting me in the ass (of course, nothing you post online is private and can't be traced back to you--it's just more difficult for potential employers to do so.) The different names work nicely to keep my academic/professional and individual selves reasonably separate in this digital era. So I guess having a wonky birth name has its perks even if I do make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I really do wonder what would happen if people had more freedom to name themselves, though (yeah, it's legally possible to do exactly what I'm talking about as long as you don't stick weird things like umlauts in your name, but the process looks like more of a pain in the ass than it should be). Or maybe just the idea that most people only have one name they keep their whole life should go away. Thoughts? Examples of cultures where this is the norm?