Hello my dears :3
So rn I’m going by Jamie and there’s a lot I really like about this name. Its meaning works well (she, who supplants), it’s the name of my favorite skater when I was a kid, it does have a nice ring to it.
But when I chose it to play with, I didn’t know where my journey would lead to. Now that I do I’m just not sure I like the ambiguity.
That being said, I wonder, how did you all pick your new names? Does it have a special meaning to you? Anything in particular that made you go like “Yes, that’s it, that’s me!”?
€: Thanks for sharing everyone (and keep going :3)! Definitely some inspiration in there.
i’m not done yet but i can give you my thoughts.
‘add an e to my given name’: would be pronounced the same (at least with a ‘good’ french pronounciation), would be easy, not to much of a decision and basically okay. maybe it would be too easy for ppl to keep old habits, though?
‘pick the name my parents had in mind for me as a girl’: not to much of a decision. unfortunately i know a person of that name. would be weird to steal the name.
‘pick the name of a distant person you venerate’: i got one (1) idea. i am into it. but i again know a person of that name. would be weird.
i had a ‘council of (two) friends’ come up with a suggestion for naming me: would technically still be a given name. 🙂 they had an idea that i basically like. but the overthinking hits. they came up with a shortened version as a name that could stem from at least two diffrent greek names. i’d be staling the long form for my passport from my greek teach! but i wouldn’t want to transscribe the modern pronounciation, rather a classical one (sounds better in german majority contexts, i think). here’s the real problem: i couldn’t find an instance of that name in classical greek texts. 😟 now i am a sad philologist.
maybe it’s version one then. since i don’t really like having a shortened name as my legal name. that’s for friends and family.
while i wrote this i got a new idea to search for the name in #4. (i am out of the field and don’t have access to the big corpora anymore). at least i got a lead. :))