I recently came to the conclusion that I was definitely supposed to be a woman (yay me). But I’ve spent the first half of my life trying to suppress that thought, that I hadn’t put much thought into what I’d like to be called.
I’m trying to find a name which would suit a relatively butch lesbian with a mischievous personality who was born on terf island to boomer parents in the 80s but also works in Scandinavia. My given name has a female version, but it sounds weird for a Britt.
What made you settle on your names?
Edit: thanks for all the replies. I’m going to try out Kara for a while and see how it resonates. Feel free to suggest similar names or potential middle names (which absolutely should not start with k, by the way).
I didn’t have a particularly negative connection with my given name, and I always liked the people I knew I shared it with. Some of them role models and mentors, some of them ancestors, and even the saint I shared a name with was oddly fitting, even though I’m not religious. I wanted to honor that connection while also taking the chance to reconnect with my family’s ancestry and the language of that land, on top of picking a more femme name. I started researching names from the language of my ancestors but eventually broadened my search to the geographic region as there is pretty heavy overlap between names in the languages of the region. While I was searching I happened to read a book by an author with an unusual name that looked familiar. I realized I had glanced at it in my searching and I took it as a bit of a sign. I researched the name, found it not only is explicitly the femme version of my given name, but its meaning also worked very well. On top of that I like the letters that are in it slightly more than my given name.
Sorry to never actually reveal the name. It’s odd enough I’m pretty sure with that and my post history across the fediverse you could dox me.
I’m in a similar situation. I’m keeping my name as it seems to be unisex. Searching my name on LinkedIn gives me 3 women (excluding myself), 3 men, and one unknown (no profile pic or posts/comments that reveal gender). Given that LinkedIn is gonna be very male heavy in the country that my name is most common in, I believe this actually means it is a female leaning unisex name. Not gonna say what it is as searching it on LinkedIn will def dox me given there are less than 10 ppl.
There’s also a more masc version of my name (my name with the vowel at the ending cut off). Searching that on LinkedIn gives only men, with a similar number to how many there were for the fem version of the name.
The name has religious and linguistic ties to my ancestors and I’m keeping it despite being agnostic.
Side note: Some relatives call me by the more masc version as a nickname. I always used to hate it and much preferred the version that’s actually on my documents. Guess it was because of how masculine it was.