How did you choose your name, and what names were you thinking about using and why?
Honestly? I didn't spend too much time thinking about my name.
Either due to a subconscious low-level dislike of my deadname, or just a desire for internet anonymity, almost all of my account names are either firstinitial + lastname or some nonsense words. So keeping the same first letter was a given (what can I say, I'm a practical person).
I also wanted to keep the same first syllable, to make it easier for people to move away from my deadname. Might sound weird, like I shouldn't be picking a name just for others' comfort but, well, that was my thought process. 🤷♀️
So from there, I first thought about Ann... but it just didn't feel right. Too short maybe? Or reminds me too much of the classmate from primary school that first kissed me and how that is a whole other rabbit hole that we won't go down right now?😬 Anyway, I never did go by a nickname, so how about something a little longer than Ann? Anna sounded nice, but it still looked too short, so I brought over the h from my deadname... I'd never seen Anna spelled this way before, and it feels right so far, so Annah is what I'm going with! (I actually thought I'd made up a new name by spelling it that way but it turns out, it's a real, if uncommon, first name!)
And I also don't mind the ambiguity in pronunciation, either ann-uh or aah-nuh are both fine, as my deadname was also pronounced one way when I was living in the US and the other when I was in Europe.
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D&D character Ā-NA 0 (13 Aug 2016) I only remembered later that I played as.
Oh, and my middle name is also undeniably masculine, so that needed to change as well. For the moment, I'm just going with Jae, as in the spelled-out pronunciation of the initial. Might have some more thoughts on that later, but updating names in documentation is a long way off, so I've got more time to think.
