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?
i just thought of a bunch of names i liked, threw out all the ones that i didn't think sounded good for a very tall woman (i'm 6'5" / 195cm), and ended up with anna, cassandra, nina and a few others.
part of me knew it would be convenient if i kept a name that began with C because i'd already released a game as C.T. Matthews, but i tried not to let that influence things too much because my name is obviously far more important to me than my fucking "brand". i ended up going with cassandra/cass anyway because i like how it sounds, i relate to the greek myth because i used to frequently get ignored and talked over in meetings and so on, and frankly i like having such a common trans woman name.
when i was 20 i read the yuri manga "Girl Friends" and it brought me so many powerful new feelings ("is it even possible to have a relationship like this?") that i sobbed for like two days
i came up with a new story for a game i was building, and decided to jump off the main characters from Girl Friends, Mari and Akko. i wanted to give my characters names that had a similar phonic flow, and i eventually picked on Lily and Anna. then i suddenly started feeling intensely emotionally attached to the name Lily, though i didn't figure out why for a few more years
accidentally named myself after my fursona when i was 20 and then stuck with it out of sheer inertia
When I was like 13, I had a realization. Women on the internet were treated SO MUCH BETTER than Men! They gave them free things, attention, why, that's stupid! It'd be better if I was a girl, then I'd get that stuff too! Again, I was 13, and a fucking idiot. So I made a fake account, and went on the IRC channel I was frequenting at the time, introducing her as my childhood friend who lived next door.
The name I chose was something girly... Well, I've always loved the name Elizabeth, it's regal and pretty, let's go with Liz the Goddess. Sure. So I "pretended" to be a girl for a few weeks. There was someone who KNEW that I was "faking it", and tried to out me a few times, like "Y'all are on the SAME IP ADDRESS", but I was like "Uh, she's just stealing my internet, yeah"
Eventually I gave up, but I still had those accounts and stuff lying around. I eventually had an Epiphany in college, and after ignoring it for a while, could ignore it no longer. Using the name "Liz the Goddess" seemed about right, so I went with Liz.
I can't remember EXACTLY why I fell in love with Liz. Maybe it's cause I like Lizards so much.
this is going to sound stupid as fuck but back in like 2015 i was questioning my gender and not for the first time. i had figured i was probably agender and was considering names like star and astria and stuff (im a fan of star names) but they didnt really seem to fit so. around this time fallout 4 came out- wait where are you going, i'm serious
anyway they had that kinda dumb feature where your robot will call you by a first name but at the time i was like "oh neat" and went looking in there to see what names they had cause i wasnt coming up with anything that "fit". then i saw the name grey and it was like. a complete epiphany. i knew that was my name right away for some reason. it just clicked in my head and ever since then its been my name. so thanks todd howard, i guess
the epiphany thing is so real, I was literally just thinking of names and trying them out like clothes in a dressing room and nothing was quite hitting until I tried Lex, from an old D&D character I had, and like, immediately felt a spark. But it wasn't QUITE hitting until I added the i. Like tuning into a radio station lol
