I Thought I was Gender-Fluid but I Just Hated My Name

My journey into the world of gender identity

Jul 09, 2025

Before I start telling my story I want to make it clear that I am an anomaly, most people who come out do not go back to the gender that they were assigned at birth. I also want to make it clear that I do not mean to invalidate anyone else’s journey or identity, this is all my own personal experience.

Growing up I had felt extremely disconnected from my birth name. From as young as I can remember my name made me feel uncomfortable, at any given opportunity I was asking people to call me by a different name. Typically, the other name was never too far off my birth name, either being a variation of it or another name that starts with the same letter. Without ever being explicitly told, I always knew that my name was predominantly used by white people for their white children, 70% of people with my name are white according to mynamestats.com . According to my mother, the way that my name was chosen was that my grandmother had suggested two names and my parents chose from those options. It should be worth noting that my grandmother is white Ukrainian and chose a typical white American name in hopes that it would aid me in a world full of bias against ‘difficult’ names. I am grateful about the sentiment behind my name but I still struggled to have a connection to it.

When my parents named me, for a reason still unknown to me, they decided against giving me a middle name. This meant that the furthest I could get away from my birth name was by having a nickname. The issue that arose with this was the fact that it was always too similar to my birth name. It was a better alternative but I still did not like who I was with this name. For a while I struggled to identify exactly what the problem was, I could feel that I was uncomfortable being who I was but I could not name the cause. This made me do a lot of self reflecting in hopes that I could discover an answer.

At first I thought it was my sexuality, I started reading about different labels and how to identify romantic versus platonic feelings. On this journey I discovered that I was bisexual, a label that I still identify strongly with to this day. Once I had discovered that aspect of myself and the feelings had not changed I started to look for other answers. The other thing I thought it could be was the fact that I had always struggled with my identity as being a mixed person in a predominantly white area. In attempts to make myself feel more connected to my black side I started researching cultural practices, I got box braids for the first time and started learning about systemic racism. Although it felt great to connect to this part of myself on a deeper level, that gnawing feeling of something being off never went away.

I was about 17 the first time that I had met someone that was non binary and my world felt like it had opened up. Previously to this, I had met and been friends with trans people however my knowledge on gender was limited and I had no idea that there were more labels. After meeting this person and having a long and in-depth discussion around gender a light bulb went off in my head.

Perhaps all these years of not liking my name was something deeper? Perhaps it was not the name itself that I did not like but everything that it represented?

The following days I started researching different labels to see if I could find one that fit. That is when I stumbled across being gender fluid. At the time it fit so well, I occasionally enjoyed dressing more androgynous and masculine but I would often return to being and feeling feminine. Now that I had discovered a gender identity that felt right, I decided that I could give myself permission to choose a new name for myself, something more neutral but still close enough to my birth name that it is easy for people to switch. My birth name made this quite difficult as it is a hyper feminine name and I do not have a middle name to choose from. Eventually I settled on the name ‘Jay’ which is what I am still called to this day. Even at the time of deciding I did not love the name but out of all the other options it felt the most like me.

For the next few years the label and nickname stuck. It was not until I was pregnant with my first child that I once again confronted myself about my gender identity. The introduction I was having into motherhood was very gendered, it felt as though there was no room for me to be fluid. As a result I decided to do some reflecting and decide if I wanted to commit to my gender identity and make the effort of constantly correcting people about my pronouns. Not to mention, what is the gender neutral term for ‘mummy’?

Not too long ago, my husband and I got married which naturally brought up questions regarding changing our name. From the beginning of our relationship, I had said that if we were to ever get married the options were either that he takes my name or that we both have to change our names. The feminist within me always hated the history behind only the woman changing her name and I promised myself that I would never be in that situation. My lovely husband agreed and we are both changing our name to one that used to be in his family. I have had a rocky relationship with my surname, it is long and difficult for English speakers to pronounce as it originates from Burundi, where my father is from, but after a lot of work I have come to be fond of it, after all the grief it has put me through I do not think I am ready to let go of it. Since I do not have a middle name I decided that my maiden name would become the middle name I never had. Now that I will be having a new surname and middle name the idea of having a new first name popped into my mind. I started to think about what I would potentially want to be called, what kind of name would fit me better.

Once I had started to think about the kind of name I might potentially want to be called, I came to the conclusion that I may not be gender fluid. Although I do have a preference for she/they pronouns I believe that the wish for more neutral pronouns stems more from wanting to detach myself from society’s expectations of women rather than my personal gender. I have never experienced gender dysphoria, I am content in being in the body of the gender I was assigned at birth but I do not necessarily want to have all the conditions that come with it. As of current, I no longer use the identity of being gender fluid however that is not to say that in a few years time I may have another realisation about my gender.

It has been a long and winding journey to get to where I am today. Although it might appear that I am back where I started, the experiences that I have had linked to my name have taught me the importance that they have. Whether it is the name of a place or a person, a name can signify so much, it can have depth and history. Names give things an identity, they helps us to verbalise thoughts and feelings into digestible pieces.