Virtually all traditional first names for girls in my birth language end in one of two sounds: “a” or “ya” (Anya, Lena, Dasha, Masha), and this gendering is ingrained in me. Certainly, the first name I was given by my parents adhered to this rule. You may notice that I didn’t use the term “deadname” to refer to the name my parents gave me. That’s because I didn’t fully part with it when I came out as non-binary. Instead, I moved it to the middle name position, to honor my parents’ choice and my cultural heritage. But many trans people do think of the first name assigned to them at birth as a deadname, i.e., they would much rather you never know it, and this is very important to respect. Please, don’t go looking for a trans person’s deadname, ever.
A notable exception to the a/ya rule in my language is the informal name Sasha or Sanya, which can be applied to both boys and girls, though the formal versions make the binary gender distinction quite clear (Aleksandr vs. Aleksandra). It might not come as a surprise that my favorite childhood fictional character was, in fact, a boy named Sanya, with a twin sister named…Sanya. (The book is Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin, and I’ve never met anyone else who’s read it, so I’m going to guess you haven’t, either). But the name of the first girl I kissed? Also Sanya.
So when I chose a new name for myself, it couldn’t end in a/ya. In fact, it was to be gender ambiguous in as many languages as possible, and it had to have some personal relevance. I wish I could say I went through a thoughtful period where I trawled through lists of non-binary names on the internet (btw, mine isn’t even on that one), wrote my own lists, narrowed them down, maybe tried some names out, kind of like this guide suggests. But that’s exactly what I didn’t do. A couple of years ago, the name just came to me: Jude. It had to be Jude.
How did this name come to me? There’s the Beatles song, obviously (and one day I’ll tell you all about how I sang that song with an ex in Vietnam). Then there’s the book that shook me to my core, A Little Life, handed to me casually by my childhood best friend. I was so unprepared, she’d given me no content warnings whatsoever, I almost cast the book aside in horror near the start; but I am glad I persevered.
The underlying theme of the book is that for some people, suicide may actually be a valid option because there’s just no overcoming their traumas, and at the time I read this, I tended to agree with that premise as far as my own will to live or lack thereof, even though I’d experienced nothing even remotely close to what the main character - Jude - endures. It’s a very love/hate book, this one, and I really loved it. A lot of people hated it. (Please, if you hated it, feel free to tell me why!). I also liked Jude the Obscure, another obnoxiously long tragedy, and the 1996 movie adaptation, which, to tie things up neatly, in my head most definitely stars Jude Law - except it really doesn’t.
When I changed my name, I was working in a job where I was introducing myself to new people on the phone constantly, and because my name was new to me, too, all of their reactions were exciting. Several people spontaneously burst into song, and one Beatles fanatic really took to me, they put my number in their phone as “Hey Jude” and pronounced my name as if I was their long lost lover, and after a while it got to the point where I had to stop working with them, given the nature of my job.
But here’s a question I didn’t expect, and yet it came up several times when I would introduce myself at that job: “Were your parents hippies?”. It’s a pernicious question, because there’s really no way to answer it truthfully without giving away something personal, which I wasn’t supposed to do; either I had to tell them I came up with the name myself, and everything that goes with that admission, or I had to tell them something about my parents. The thing is, my parents did like the Beatles, especially my mom who, I remember clearly from my childhood, had a big yellow book of their songs, published the same year that I was born. But does that make her a former hippie? And might she have considered the name “Jude” for me herself, had she been British?
I have a recurring dream, a nightmare of sorts, that I’m back amongst the high school cool kids who looked upon me with disdain. Before I changed my name, in this dream I was completely invisible. I would try to interact with people, and they just wouldn’t acknowledge my existence. It was like wading through water, submerged, drowning. Now, the dream has changed, and instead these same people are referring to me by the wrong name, and as I try to correct them, they can’t hear me. And I realize the meaning: To have your chosen name respected, along with your pronouns, is to be seen.
Here are some delightfully illustrated stories of how other trans and gender-nonconforming people chose their names. If you have chosen a name for yourself and don’t mine sharing how you chose it, please leave a comment - perhaps you’ve even written about it already and care to share a link?
Names. Wow. What a tangled topic.
So here's my (brief) story. My first name is my birth name. My parents wanted something "distinctly feminine," and somehow they ended up giving me a name that could really flip in any direction, including "gender ambiguous" (and oddly my middle name is like that, too). I hated it as a kid, but now I feel that I have grown into it and can appreciate it more.
My last name, however, was an invention all my own. Due to an abusive ex, I really could not keep my birth name and maintain my safety. I considered other family names but none of them fit right. And so I consoled myself by playing my guitar while I thought about options. Lo and behold, I named myself after the guitar, which is how I became a Taylor. And now I have people ask me all the time if I'm related to so-and-so Taylor, to which I always laugh and say, "maybe, but probably not."
Jude is a lovely name. As a linguist I'd love to know what your birthday language is, but only if you're comfortable to say. I'm a native Swede myself, living in the UK, but I studied Russian at university and also spent some time there 😵