I’ve been thinking a lot about names and especially deadnames lately. This stems from my investigation of the term “deadname” in I Can’t Stop Thinking About Transness!!!, how it’s a relatively recent term and reflects a shift in framing in how trans people regard their past and present names. When I first started transition, I came into it with my name (well, my first name at least) and from there tried to speedrun the paperwork segment of the Transition Tech Tree, making updates everywhere I could. 15 months later and I’m still getting deadnamed by recruiter emails, healthcare systems, and junk mail. It seems to me like deadnames never die, they live on as zombies, shambling back again and again despite my best efforts.
I was helping my girlfriend Lilith move recently into a shared house, and it turned out that one of her housemates knew me from a bar trivia scene I was a part of 10 years ago. He recognized me and admitted he didn’t know my current name, so I filled him in. “But you used to be [Deadname], right?” He said in front of Lilith, who had otherwise only ever known me as Erin. In my head I was like, dude, why would you need to ask that? I told you what to call me now! Moments like this can feel like a stupid little cisgender gotcha - “Aha, you used to be a boy!” This is also why I carry a little hesitation around sharing transition timelines. Despite having made plenty of them, it feels a bit like doing the same trick myself, a little plea for validation by showing from whence I came. I don’t think it works, though, it seems othering to cis people and lends mystique to the past. Timeline swapping is a fun activity in trans-exclusive spaces - lots of opportunities to celebrate each others’ victories - but I think it gives the cis the wrong idea.
Getting back to deadnames, there’s a real ease of mind that I’ve found in meeting people who have no prior name of mine to fall back on, who in encountering older pictures and media are prevented from fleshing that person out as anyone other than “pre-transition Erin.” But on the other hand, like I said, names are zombies. I could continue to pour effort into erasing my deadname from the world to “protect” my friends and acquaintances from that knowledge, but do I have that kind of time and energy? I have one friend who ran GitHub scripts on all projects that they touched at their work in order to scrub the code histories of their name. I have another friend who has turned deadname-hunting into a sport, and works to actively retcon things like her high school letter jacket, creating artifacts of an imagined past. Good for them I suppose, but I guess where I’m at is I feel like that work gives the old name more power. It’s like a hydra; there’s an exponential increase of effort required every time you cut loose a head.
There’s also the phenomenon of “trial names” that some trans people use early in transition, which can further complicate histories and paper trails. I know several transfems who feminized their previously masculine name, and for some of them this was a destination while for others it was a stepping stone. It doesn’t seem uncommon either for people to have names that they want to use, but which get torpedoed by a disapproving spouse, and so in the infinite placating spirit of the transitioner they remain with their less-than-ideal name. These break my heart, honestly, and if I get the opportunity to call these people by their desired names I take it. (Maybe this isn’t helpful, but no one has told me to stop yet.) Some people seem to struggle on embracing a new name, going through a number of trial names. It’s not quite the same thing but it took me forever to pick a middle name, and I’m still a little iffy on whether I made the right choice.
Maybe the answer in what to do about deadnames can come from the same question of what to do about zombies. I’m thinking back to Shaun of the Dead when Shaun’s bestie Ed is infected but remains sentient enough that he can stay chained up in the shed in back of Shaun’s house for the occasional gaming session together. Is there some utility that deadnames can offer from beyond the grave? This doesn’t mean that I’m letting you off the hook though, Animal Crossing. I want my island back.