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[pink-miniskirt.livejournal.com]

hello all, i know i don't post here much but i have been wondering something and would like some help from you on it, i was thinking about names, specifically our names as transfolk, what they are and how we picked them, and if i get enough replies to this i'd even like to compare that to the list of most popular names for the last few years. i ask this for two reasons, first beacause of idle curiosity about the subject and second a genuine interest in how we choose our names, so many people wish they could change their names and here we are given that chance and so it intersts me to see how we pick our new names, also this could turn out to be a valuable reasource for people jsut starting or just begining to think of a name, so please comment, everyone is welcome, and i'll start us off with my own story of how i chose my name.

i was born Alvin Jack Valentine Moen Turpin, a mouthful and another long story that shall be saved for elsewhere, and i never really liked my name too much, i always thought that when i said it it got mashed in my mouth a bit, and when i started exploring my gender in high school i started thinking about different names, i wasn't really seriously considering anything at the time but playing with different names, and one day i had written on my hand "Hi, i'm Mary" thinking that i kind of liked the name and that it would go on my list of definite possibilities when i got to that point, a friend of mine saw it, and not really knowing the full meaning of it decided that it was not my name, and she began thinking of a name for me and a little later decided that i should be called Summer, which i laughed at a little at first because i tended to take on a kind of hard personality and wear solid black constantly so i thought it was a funny choice, she washed Mary off of my hand and wrote Summer in it's place, later that day other friends of mine saw it and thought it fit me quite well and the more they said it the more i realized i loved it, looking back i realize that a big part of the reason for that was that i had been putting on this 'tough' show for people, or trying to, and if i was going to start a new chapter there was no point in having the part of me i was trying to be rid of cloud that, Summer was the name of the little girl inside me who'd been trying to get out, who needed to be protected, and loved. and so, i am Summer

EDIT: i forgot to mention, the reason i put down my birth name is that i have decided to keep the middle name Valentine, it's always been the only part of my name that i really liked and depending on how things go when i come out to family i might consider making it my last name instead of my middle