Names

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, I just keep staying up too late at night to write it.

Names have always been something I give a lot of importance to. A name is not just what a person is called, but it's a summary of who they are. If I say "Michael Jackson" or "Mahatma Gandhi," it brings to mind everything that person did, everything they stood for, and everything that made them who they were.

When I began my androgyne journey, the idea of having a new name occurred to me fairly early on. I was following a number of bigender and transgender people on YouTube, and all of them had adopted names that fit who they really were.

I have a fairly gender-neutral first name, but I can't stand being called by it. I've always gone by my first and middle names put together, which makes a very feminine name. But I wanted to have a name to reflect the person I'm becoming. I pored over several websites of gender-neutral baby names and came up with a few I kind of liked: Skye, Skylar, and Dakota were my favorites. But the one that jumped out at me was Hadley. It's an Old English name meaning "from the heath-covered meadow." It's not very common, at least not as a first name, which really appealed to me (I've always liked being a little bit different from the crowd).

So...Hadley it is. I'm only using it online for now, to see what I think of it. I've started a new Facebook page (ugh, Facebook! But the whole world seems to be on it) using my new name, and I'll find other places to start using it, too.

If you'd like, you can look me up on Twitter, here is my page.

All for now. I'll be back soon with good news from my employer.