I'll go first:
So I originally was going to go with Sara. I've always vibed with the name, I used it in video games for my characters constantly, and it just felt right. Also for Sara Kerrigan who's "I'm queen bitch of the universe" line was probably my first experience of gender envy. The problem is at this point Sara had become a character in what was my most popular series at the time so it felt weird naming myself after a character I only retroactively realized was a self-insert of my gender needs.
I next was going to go with Jessica, for Jessica Drew from Marvel - specifically the Ultimate version of the comics. While the Ultimate comic line is largely remembered for being mostly bad and had the one redeeming quality of introducing us to Miles Morales (which 100% is the best thing to come from the Ultimate universe), it also gave us Jessica Drew of Earth 1620 - a clone of Peter Parker who just had the Y chromosome replaced with an X, and also had all of Peter's memories. The character was incredibly trans coded and fascinated me long before I figured out I was trans...but one of my closest friends is Jessica and so it felt weird.
So then I was going to with Rachel for Rachel Summers from the X-Men as well as to give myself a name that tied me to my Jewish origins but then someone asked "Can I call your Rach?" and the sound of that shortening was so very much not a vibe that I dropped the name entirely.
Then I remembered Sylvia. Sylvia Dawngard was a character of mine in a long running FATE game I was playing with friends at the time. While not my first TTRPG character to be a woman - that was a Sara - Sylvia was the one that gave me gender euphoria. A changeling in a world were that meant "Human who got abducted by fae and was raised by them," Sylvia was the champion of the long forgotten Autumn Court of fae and over the course of the game came to weild the Eclipse Hammer (which I now have tattooed on my arm) and just was one of my favorite characters I've ever played. She also was constantly torn between her fae upbringing and human nature, not feeling like she fully belonged in either world, which only changed when she met her Nephilim girlfriend Kohabiel and together they formed a new home and... yeah, I loved that character.
Equally importantly there's no shortening of that name I dislike. Syl, Sylvie, Vee, Via, Lyv, Sylv, basically any version of the name worked perfectly for me.
So yeah, that's my story. What's yours?
This'll be a long post 'cause plurality.
First up Leolin was our chosen name before realising plurality. It's an anglicisation of Llewelyn, drawing from the two flase beliefs that the Llew in Llewlyn is llew as in lion, and that the Leo in Leopold is leo as in lion to morph the Llew into Leo. It ends up as a distincly Wenglish (Welsh-English) name, and also relating to cats like our legal name is, and pronounceable by non Welsh speakers as long as they don't overthink it. We had actually been using Leo as a fursona name, and also our Animal Crossing name, but it wasn't intended to become our primary name at first.
Individual headmates under the cut.
Traci, my parents had named me after my dad's job so I named myself after my own job (inspired by the Pokémon character). Amber because we love Jurassic park.
My very first crush was in kindergarten, a girl named Laura. That name stuck with me, and when choosing my name, I tweaked it a bit to Lauren. In retrospect, kinda wish I stuck with Laura, but it's been over a decade, I'm pretty committed to my name
OKay I enjoy telling this story but it is highly embarrassing! (And this went on far too long, so for everyone's feeds, I will put this here...)
Back in 'bouts middle school, I naively thought I would write myself a novel; a highly indulgent little piece about an uplifted sewer gator (indulgent for reasons friends can probably place). And I had an important female character that I couldn't place a good name for - she was a little on the fringes and out-there, someone befitting of taking home a talking baby alligator she found in the sewers.
Simultaneously, I was a very big Sonic child. I played Mario games, sure, but they weren't obsessions like Sonic games were. And I, impressionable little boy whose first CDs by choice were Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction" and Metallica's self-titled, was enraptured by Shadow the Hedgehog (2005). (I'm still a sicko and apologist for the game, btw.) So I played it a lot and loved the songs on it even more.
One of the ending themes in Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) is "Chosen One" by A2 (now known as Mona Lisa Overdrive).
And the melodramatic chorus goes:
Wish I may
Wish I might
Be someone else tonight
But I, audio-processing deficient little autist, heard:
Charmy
Charmyte
Be someone else tonight
And could you blame me? Charmy Bee was literally in the game.
Anyways, "Charmyte" arose from that, and it sounded a bit out-there enough that I could spin it for my character. I even made a connection to the character loving herpetology - the old myth of salamanders being associated with fire (due to sleeping in logs that were then used as firewood). Hence, a "char mite". I thought I was clever.
I'll admit, I don't remember how I came to her last name as "Seeth". That's not a name, Char. I think it just sounded cool.
So, anyways, the story went nowhere fast. I'm sure I have the doc somewhere on this laptop. It wasn't terribly good. That's beyond the point. The point is that not long after, I started getting more involved in online spaces. I had used generic-sounding handles before, but I really wanted to stand out from the crowd, y'know? And I had become a little obsessed with this Charmyte character - given her all kinds of tragic backstory the only way I know how: listened to music and made AMVs in my head (we all do that, right?). So I decided to simply yoink the name for use as my handle.
Little egg boy using a name explicitly for a female character as "his" handle; yeah, I'm sure that's nothing.
From the handle, I eventually fell in with a bunch of fine folks at an All Dogs To to Heaven forum (the actual linkage is deeply embarrassing to the point I wish to not share here, but if you know me you can ask). And from there came my very first fursona - a little doggy. A kai ken - chosen because I scrolled on the wikipedia list of breeds of dog and I thought it looked neat. And from character to handle to character again, he was dubbed Charmyte.
Like many a good little egg, he had a "genderbent" form named Charity. This isn't deeply related, but sometimes the signs really were all there.
And as I stuck with the fursona, more it became just my name, too. Even as the fursona shifted to kobold and revealed itself as my true form, Charmyte stuck with it.
At some point a few years back, I fashioned a middle-name too, for completion. Rolling around ideas and suggestions from my closest sophonts, I came to Amethyst. Felt good on the tongue, was my favorite color, had a y in it (yes, I like the use of y as a vowel, could you tell?), and was my birthstone to boot.
Charmyte Amethyst Seeth. At your service!
Thank you, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005).
