http://identityfail.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] identityfail.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] trans2010-08-03 11:44 pm

Name Choices and Ethnicity/Language

Hi everyone,

So I'm (possibly) ftm and toying with going by a male name and pronouns at college in the fall. Of course, choosing a name is one of the stumbling blocks I've come across. In general when introducing myself as male, I go by Simon, but sometimes it feels kind of incongruous, because while I'm an American / native-English-speaker, my parents are from India and my birthname is an Indian one, originally Sanskrit. Plus I guess I "look" Indian whatever that means. I'm defo not white, etc.

Do any of you have this second-generation experience, or whatever? I rarely identify as Indian -- it's just an occasional vague sense of heritage more than anything, and a rationalizing of my parents' uptightness -- but I keep wavering on whether or not I should pick an Indian boy name. It's just one of those things that's sort of a part of me but sort of not, you know?

Just lookin' around for other people's experiences and so on. Obviously only I can decide for myself...just wondering how others dealt with this. Did you end up choosing a name that matched your heritage/ethnicity or your current nationality/language? How did you come to that decision?

Thanks!

S