Well, there’s options, believe it or not.

Legal name changes are slow, and aren’t free, but they aren’t complicated usually.

That won’t stop family, because family can be assholes. But it does mean that you can introduce yourself by the new legal name and anyone you meet after is probably going to stick with it, even if they later learn you changed your name.

It’s also possible to eventually make it so that even family will either respect your name , or get shut out.

My story isn’t the same, not really, because I never hated the name I was called as a kid. I just liked my first name better. My middle name is a fairly popular one overall, and it is fairly common among the Irish descended parts of my family. My first name is also irish (and I think you see how my story differs in another way, since both of them are historically present names rather than an attempt at reconstruction), and it’s actually harder to use because it isn’t in a common English spelling, it uses Irish spelling. It’s also very rare outside my family in the US.

In middle school, I kinda got into my various lineages, and we had a guest speaker that was an expert in the local history, and that included a lot of the history of the people that immigrated here. Turns out that my first name has a really interesting history behind it, and I dug that.

So, again, obviously not the same situation. But, when I decided to switch to using my first name, I ran into the family wall. At school, it was easy. The next year, when teachers were taking roll at the first of the year, and they had trouble reading off that name, instead of just telling them to use my middle name, I corrected their pronunciation.

Since they didn’t know I hadn’t previously used my middle name, they had zero issues. Since the teachers used it, the students started to. By the end of that year, even kids that had known me as my middle name since kindergarten had switched.

But family? My dad was the only one that immediately switched. He slipped a few times, but that was it. Pretty much everyone else was all “no, you’re middle name, and that’s that”.

And that’s despite the ones that had nicknames for me. So, they used the nicknames, but not my actual, legal first name. But after a few years, me just ignoring anyone that didn’t use my first name, my chosen name, got the idea. Out of respect, that didn’t include my grandparents, but they also weren’t in the “I own your name” camp, they just had trouble switching because it’s hard to undo 14 years of habit.

It was actually a major issue with my sister for a long time because she was an asshole about it.

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The point of all that is that time and me being a stubborn son of a bitch won out. That, and a willingness to cut the ones that wouldn’t respect me enough to use my chosen name out of my life entirely when possible, or to stonewall them at family gatherings. Had to knock one of my cousins out one 4th of July though. I wouldn’t respond to him repeatedly using my middle name, and the dude was fool enough to try and push me physically. Strangely, that put an end to anyone being a dick about it. One uncle did say I wouldn’t do that to him, and I told him he was right, I’d kick him in the balls instead, but he didn’t push it

So, definitely not the same thing, like I said. But can you imagine how many I would have had to punch if I’d gone with something that wasn’t on my birth certificate?

What I discovered is that people use names as shackles sometimes. Not everyone, but most. They’ll nake up their own nickname for you, even if only in their own head, and the name they know you by is their leash to you. By having that label, they think they own a part of you. There’s a flip side of it, too, where they have memories of you that they cherish, amd and changing a label feels like losing that person in their head, but it’s still a form of ownership.

It isn’t necessarily malice though. It’s partly the way our brains work, applying labels and templates to streamline processing things. And it does take work to change someone’s name in your head, it isn’t an instant thing, no matter how happy you are to do it. But there’s always those assholes that think they own you because they named you, either literally as parents, or as family that used that name. They don’t even settle for the fact that the last name lingers on (at least until marriage, when we get a legal name change for that if we want it).

Now, I’m going to bring up something a little sensitive, meant in the spirit of understanding.

There is a series called Roots. It’s one of the most important television productions ever. There’s a part of it that revolves around a name. The slave name vs the true name of the character, Kunta Kinte. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but even for a young white boy like I was when I saw it, it showed the power of a name. The scene involving the horrors placed on a human being having his name stripped from him is one that lingers.

That’s why we all need to respect people’s names. Doesn’t matter why the person wants their name. It’s their name. Could be me reaching for a connection to my ancestry. Could be you reaching for independence. Could be trans folks struggling for their own right to exist. Could just be whim and whimsy. Doesn’t matter. Trying to force a name on someone is only less bad than slave names by a matter of degree, the thinking behind it is the same.

Don’t be afraid to own your own name. Life circumstances may not make it practical to fight for it at any given moment, but it is your right to own your own name.

Edit: had an irl friend message me about this, recalling seeing some of the stuff. Made me come back and recheck my comment for typos.

Then a i saw the down votes on the post. This is a vent community. The post is a vent. I rarely bring up votes at all, but that is really shitty behavior to down vote this post when it is fully the place for it

Dying to know what burden they straddled you with

I avoided making friends to just not be called that shit. I’ve picked fights with well-meaning people for calling that shit “pretty”.

That’s a pretty extreme reaction, especially when you’ve identified them as well meaning. RE the family there are unfortunately people who enjoy pushing buttons. Especially when they’re guaranteed a reaction that they’re looking for. Either ignore people who call you by the old name before you legally changed it or politely remind them of your new name. All these reactions in this post over a name is pretty concerning behaviour for someone who may not know, especially how much impact it’s had on your life per your recount. Might be worth chatting to a therapist about too?