my name is now Auburn, formerly Ada.
falling out of love for one’s name feels pretty bad. i held the name ‘Ada’ since sometime in 2019, so I had it for around 5 years.
i think it’s core to the ‘transgender experience’ to change your name to something you like, and having friends and strangers refer to you using that chosen name is supposed to feel good. it’s supposed to feel humanizing (“gender-affirming”?). it’s supposed to help make you feel like a real person.
for my own sanity, i need to make sure there isn’t a disconnect between my internal model of myself and what i externalize as my personality, as the things I say, how I present, even my physical appearance.
my name is a part of this.
i picked ‘Ada’ at a time in my life where absolutely everything about me was ‘boyish’. i found it useful to carry a woman’s name, since it hopefully provided the sort of contrast to my Everything Else that would make it obvious enough that i was nonbinary, or otherwise that i don’t care about gender - in a cool, devil-may-care sort of way? something like that. it’s been 5 years and I can’t remember exactly what i was thinking.
toward the end of last year i started to hate the name. i’m writing this post the day after my two year HRT anniversary (yay!) and the changes to my body probably factor into it. or maybe not.
anyway, as of 2026-02-04, my name’s Auburn.
Tuesday 17th February, 2026 • Auburn
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