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?
'Petra,' our sort of overall name or core/host's name, comes from several fictional characters named Petra who were cool and smart and clever. Petra from children's book Chasing Vermeer, Petra from Minecraft Story Mode, etc. etc.
it's also kind of a reference to Petrichor, the earthy-smell-after-it-rains. so like, we're Petra Core. which is itself something of a nod to Cave Story's 'Core' boss.
mmmm. gonna do the headmates / aspects and other names we can remember stories for below:
Our catgirlself Cora came from the same sort of Petrichor reference, also from our username phantasmaCora which we had already been using as the 'studio name' on game dev projects before Cora-as-a-headmate showed up. Notably Cora sort of, came to us very clearly one day, like we didn't have to think about it it was just instinctive to say "oh today i'm Cora!" which was very validating of our early plurality explorations. she also goes by Cordelia (simple expansion of Cora) and Scarlet (because her instinctive color association is red!)
Our doll Penny got her name from our girlfriend @vanadiya-cataclysm-athelya making a "penny for your thoughts?" joke and kind of spiraled outwards from there. its also somewhat a reference to Penny Polendina from RWBY, but not very as we haven't actually watched that show.
Isolyne is another big one we've been using lately, kind of a name for our larger-than-life sona-y mythic sorceress self. it's just derived from Isobel + Jolene/Jolyne, and pronounced how those names would imply.
Zheni/Zhenivieve actually originates from an old character of ours, our first major game dev project had a protagonist who would come out as transfem and be named Zhenivieve. It originates as an alteration of Genivieve of course.
some older ones...
Sonya was a name we used for a sort of futch-into-butch leaning aspect of ourself. we still like the name but haven't felt connected to it that much recently? its just derived from thinking about names for big strong women with big laughs.
Leticia was Sonya's more sort of High Femme counterpart. we got the name from the "Leticia and Fitzroy" secret sidequest in the game Iconoclasts, but it was very 'in name only,' not inspired by the sidequest's story itself. it was also routed through some stories we wrote about lesbian starships, there Leticia was a huge high-power space battleship. we likewise haven't felt too connected to this one more recently.
