Writer's Block: What is your name?

[nixy]

[Error: unknown template qotd]I do have another name. Several of them, if we include online names. My given name is not the name I use - my "real" name isn't a secret, but it's not the name I prefer. The name I use is a man's name. It's a hick man's name, for that matter. It's my first initial and the first two letters of my last name, and it was suggested by an old work email address. It's a better fit than the girlie name I never liked, even though I am a fairly girlie girl. The only people who actually know me who don't call me by this hillbilly/hobo name are the members of my biological family. My relationship with my family is strained, at best, so the fact that they don't call me the right name is just another reason to seethe and fester every time we interact.

It's surprising how many people take offense at my preferred name when I am introduced. Older people tend to become very irritable and often challenge me on whether or not I have the right to be called whatever pleases me rather than a gender-appropriate name. I was getting a license for my scooter at the DMV the other day and had to sign an affadavit stating that my preferred name = same person as given name since the scooter shop wrote the preferred version on all the legal documents. The DMV lady suggested that I put the preferred name in quotes rather than bothering with a legal change, but I pointed out to her that there are too many people who won't call me what I like to be called if they know there's a girl name available. Based on her expression, I think she would probably be one of those people.

I have a pen name picked out for when I finish my book(s). I love the name, but it's not one I could actually use in everyday life due to vague and complicated feelings about its propriety/plausibility. Unlike my preferred name, the pen name has no relationship at all to my given name and, despite my dislike of my given name, it's what I went by for the first 30 or so years of my life. A derivative of that name makes sense to me in a way that a completely new name cannot. It's like my nose: I hate my profile, but I've had the same one for so long now that there doesn't seem to be much point in having it altered. I'm still going to be the person who hates her nose regardless of what that nose looks like.

Comments

[mytwilightlove.livejournal.com]

People can be so superficial. Because you prefer a less girly name they get upset with you? I have a cousin named Alexandria that goes by Alex. Isn't that a guy's name usually? Who the hell cares? *grumbles*

[nixypixel.livejournal.com]

We live in the South, and I tend to rub older, more conservative Southerners the wrong way just by being so obviously not-Southern. If an older man decides to get along with me anyway, he labels me a spitfire and treats me like I'm a frisky filly. Old Southern men are more forgiving of perceived eccentricities than are the women, and a low cut top cancels out a lot of nonsense - using a man's name, for example. Older women press their lips together tightly and narrow their eyes whenever I speak and if they say anything to me at all, it's "Well, bless your heart!" which is Southern for "Fuck you." This entire section of the country is just not my scene.

[mytwilightlove.livejournal.com]

Wow! I've never quite met anyone like that. They don't have any right to judge because your preferred name, for Pete's sake.

[liegenschonheit.livejournal.com]

I know your hick name! I was confused a bit the first time I got an email from you with that name attached, but I say go with what makes you feel comfortable. Who cares what some nutjob at the DMV says? If Nick Cage can name his kid Kal-El legally, you should be whatever name you want, regardless of masculinity or possible white-trashishness. Yes. I make up words.

[nixypixel.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, it's offputting to many people meeting me face to face, and it's confusing online because I'm not even pretending to be male. It's awfully butch, and I'm...not. However, growing up, I was always taller than everyone else, and weird, and an outcast, and I didn't feel like I was successful as a female. The authentic-seeming girls were tiny, more squeamish and socially calculating than me, and would never let me play with them. I never wanted to be a boy in any serious way, but I never felt like I knew how to "do" girl correctly. Now that we live in the South, there are so many more requirements for being female that I'm never going to be able to meet, or even really understand, that I've just had to give up, for the most part.

I'm quite sure that my ongoing fascination with gender, and with people who fall in between or outside of our current binary gender constructs, has much to do with my never feeling accepted or acknowledged as female even though I am female...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_simplyrandom/]

My mother wanted me to have a masculine nickname to go by, but she thought I was going to made fun of when I got older, so she decided to call me by my middle name.

I hope you're okay after the storm. What a wreck this weather has been lately.

[nixypixel.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have wanted to use a male name when I was in school - I got picked on enough as it was. My given name is uncommon, but when it does show up in a movie or a story, it's always spelled in some awful, phonetic/trailerish manner, and the character is always appalling. The girlfriend who ruins everything in Spinal Tap is probably the best known of these.

I actually love this weather - except for the threat of "rotational winds," of course. It's the last tolerable bit before the heat makes me a virtual shut-in. We moved here the year after the tornado ripped up East Nashville, which is our neighborhood, and we've managed to avoid anything more serious than a downed line or two since then.

Are you in Nashville?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_simplyrandom/]

Oops, late. I live in North Nashville, where I am about 15 minutes south of Gallatin (famous for that tornado two years ago).

[diskoverdrive.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask what this "offensive" hick name is. I can't think up any at the moment that are too horrible; but then again you are in the South so any masculine nickname is a horrible one.

[nixypixel.livejournal.com]

The only reason anyone takes offense is because I'm female. It's otherwise just a hick name. I'm sorry I'm being coy about it - I've never made a secret of what I expect people to call me if they meet me in RL in any other online community I've been a part of, but all the TSR stuff has me paranoid...though I don't know what they could get with my non-legal name. Oh, hell. *whispers* It's the same name as the dad on Beverly Hillbillies.

And that would be the extent of my Swede-baffling skills.

[diskoverdrive.livejournal.com]

Oh-ho! Well then. I can see how the Good Women of the South(tm) could take offense to a woman calling themselves like that. I think it's neat and kinda cute personally, but then again I'm all for gender-bending names.