Hey fedi! Do you have weird feelings about people using your first name/prefer strongly to go by a nickname?
I've got a theory here, because I swear I was neurodivergently weird about my name waaaaay before I realised I was trans and that genuinely wasn't in a gender way ​​

@darkphoenix I feel this poll has too little answers. I always used my name, no matter if as an egg or not, and I think it might be important for your theory.

@Lili interesting. I was very strongly preferring darkphoenix or phoenix and put off by people using $deadname well before it became a gender thing, just as a comfortable mask in queer online spaces that turned weird when I met those same people IRL, and I wonder a) how common that is in non-trans people and b) whether it’s a common predictor of people who will turn out to be trans. Really I need to do a follow up in a year for that last one :p

@darkphoenix i wish my friends irl called me "gettie" instead of using my name. Not that it's bad, but i would prefer it that way.

@getimiskon@fedi.getimiskon.xyz yeah that's pretty much the feeling I mean tbh, though with a range of intensity that I'm sorta disregarding

@darkphoenix It's complex as I don't like nicknames for me set by others who know my "real" name and I don't like any derived version of my "real" name (which also doesn't 100% represent me). And I don't consider my last name to refer to me.

@lukyan@lukyan.eu oh yeah! I mean I went by phoenix a lot in the past, which is basically a derivative off a nickname that started on IRC forever ago, so definitely not that kind of nickname

@darkphoenix not trans and both call names are equally valid for me

@darkphoenix@not.an.evilcyberhacker.net Aahh, I don't know which of the top two to actually pick ​​

I will say that I have always been a bit funny about my real name, but I have never actually had a nickname for people to use, so I've basically stewed on this my entire life.

@darkphoenix #hangalltrannyfags

@darkphoenix@not.an.evilcyberhacker.net i just realized... pre-egg crack i prefer calling people by their pseudonym (and never revealed my name), and post-egg crack i prefer calling people by their personal names (and prefer to be called claire, though my pseudonym or its variations is fine)

@Bard@transfem.social heh yeah it did occur to me that this doesn't reflect the nuance of how this might change when one's egg cracks, sowwy

@Bard like. my own experience doesn’t fit this poll, lol

@darkphoenix@not.an.evilcyberhacker.net I guess the (probably) fits.
More to the point is that I might prefer a nickname, but I don't know for sure because I don't have one. And I'm unlikely to go into work for example and suddenly ask people to use one.

@BlankEclair@transfem.social yeah I need an option for that, since it seems not uncommon
I missed it entirely despite that literally being my own experience, because I was looking through the lens of talking to a cis friend with a Name Thing and realising I'd had one of those long before it was a gender thing

@darkphoenix not trans, and I’ve never had a preference. it probably helps that my name is kit, so it’s both genderless and practically a nickname already

I like nicknames though, especially if they’re funny. as long as it feels like me, I take ‘em all just the same

there was a couple of years where I felt weird being called kerosyn though, because while I do use that name for my music, it’s also the name of the character in my profile picture, and until recently I felt like they didn’t really represent me. until I decided we actually have the same flavor of autism, that is

@darkphoenix What do you mean by “real” name?

@polychromata@animalfound.family if you're trans, whatever you chose/would like to have on your ID, otherwise, the name that is your legal name

@polychromata@animalfound.family I realise that's a massive oversimplification that doesn't match all people, sorry about that

@darkphoenix i dont care. call me criss, kura, vanthia, whatever. use any pronoun available from the “classic” two (though my body says i am male).

do whatever the fuck you want, so long that you dont try to insult or bully.

@darkphoenix There’s sort of a polarising effect. Our full name (Many Colors, Many Forms, Many Flavors, Maybe More) is really good and tends to evoke a squee when it’s used. Obviously it’s a bit long to use in conversation, but some creatures occasionally do anyway, and that’s very good. The shortest variants (Ichor and ychr) are also good. On the other paw, the variants in the middle (Many Colors and polychromata) are just okay, not as nice as the others.

@darkphoenix The name we want on government-issued documents is specifically designated as a governmentsona, not anything that creatures we interact with socially should use

@darkphoenix …and i don’t think that matches any of the poll options. x3

@polychromata@animalfound.family heh yup :D
It's lovely, and nice, but really nothing that either this poll or any government could represent accurately if they tried

@darkphoenix
It depends on the context. If my hacker friends would call me by my real name I would be disturbed. On the other hand, if a coworker would call me 'brolf' I'd also be disturbed. I'm quite certain I'm cis, fyi.

@darkphoenix since i came out i left all the internet personas and gamertags i had behind soo it's somehow only my name now

@darkphoenix I really like my name, but I find it weird if my friends (or other people I know privately, not from work) call me by it. I prefer the abbreviation of it that I use as a nickname with my friends.
And in writing using my whole first name is fine, if you don't capitalize it and instead just write it in lower case.
But I generally dislike it/get irritated, if people use my name without any good reason. Like when talking to me. Using it to talk about me is fine.

@darkphoenix that definitely feels more like neurodivergent reasons and not gender reasons
On the other hand I guess the nickname is more gender neutral than my whole first name

And I'm also non-binary trans. So who knows 🤷

@darkphoenix
And although I think friends should use the shortened version of my name, I would say that $firstGivenNamen "is" me
Whereas $firstGivenName $secondGivenName $familyName refers to me, but doesn't really feel like me. And $firstGivenName $familyName is kinda 'official me'
And $nickname $familyName just isn't something that exists

And my Mastodon handle are just random letters I use here, it would be strange if people used it irl

I guess I have some feelings and opinions about names

@darkphoenix For me, nickname is better, because I'll keep it. I currently have two "real" names, the boy one for work and parents which still fits my appearance (mostly) and the girl one for some friends. Maybe I should come out, but I still don't feel safe enough about it.

@Larymir@chaos.social yeah, same lol

@Pixtxa@chaos.social oh yeah, i'm also incrementally working on that still, lol

@darkphoenix

Nickname because until I was 6 years old I thought it was my real name until it turned out that was just a shortened version of my real name. Then, when I was 10, I found out that that was actually just my *middle* name and my *real* first name was something entirely different.

@darkphoenix For me this changed a lot when I cracked. Before, I was going by the given name almost everywhere, only my gamer circles would occasionally use the nickname (I think most of them knew my given name as well). And I had this nickname since at least 2011.

When I cracked (started cracking?) this year, I realised it is easier to claim any grammatical gender for my nickname than for the given name, so I now *slightly* prefer that. Many people still use the given name, but that does not bother me too much. I am slowly working on converting people to use the nickname, though.

Being non-binary + agender, I think my given name is probably going to stay with me (on IDs and such) and that is fine.

@darkphoenix
I have no preferred names and I do not know what I am.

But I do know I've never liked my name, and I've only tolerated the ones I've chosen for myself. Names never feel right to me.

Though... Hrmm... 🤔

@ledoian yeah, I shed my given name long before I cracked, and it already felt really weird to have friends use it for reasons I couldn’t articulate. When I did come out I kinda banned it for a bit and went exclusively by nicknames before coming by my current name which is now my favourite thing to be called tbh

@darkphoenix
Not Trans - but anyone using my real name most likely does not know me.

@foxhkron @darkphoenix same here, although I have never been called by my nick irl

@darkphoenix there is also interestingly enough very big cultural differences. I noticed a lot more people have nicknames in the US than here in Norway. And people in Norway kinda dislike nicknames, and it's a bit weird to use one. (I'm Norwegian and have a nickname)

@darkphoenix nickname is/contains my real name

@darkphoenix hmm

well, I never liked my Deadname, but yknow, I told people to call me by my last name instead, not a nickname. And nowadays I'm fine with Lisa as well as Riedler, Lisa just being a preferred first name, not a nickname.

@darkphoenix I have very strong feelings about who can use what name. Divided along language lines, too. And nicknames are only okay if I've okayed them, with that particular person. But I'd muddy the waters a bit because I'm pretty sure this is a very common thing for more intersectional people to have. When people mispronounce and misspell your names since day 1 you get very tired of other people owning your name very fast.

This is also why I pick names for myself that are very simple to pronounce in practically any language

@darkphoenix I picked my name myself, of course I want people using it xD

But I did vibe with some of my online nicknames more than my deadname before when.

@amberage@eldritch.cafe yeah pretty much same,,,