Transvox - What's in a name - and how to choose yours!

[00:00:07] I work back to Transvox and I thought, Jen, we sort of have Bosch, oh first of all, how Jen, how you? And very well, Jim, how are you? It's really because you weren't wearing any costumes this week, that's...

[00:00:22] I'm just... one of those days. All right, okay. We're looking at... I'm really interested because I was listening to a trans man, you're the day, and a group talking about how to choose a name. And the significance of names is such like them, and how you find them,

[00:00:40] and how you choose them, and how you think about them. But it is interesting because actually, I do remember the conversation myself, I did try four or five names out, and actually you're on them for a year before I came onto my final name.

[00:00:52] So it's a fascinating process, isn't it? Choosing your own name? Are you going to be able to be able to be your name? Yeah, I started. My very first one was... Look at this. Hey? I love this one.

[00:01:07] I'm going to say, do you have a try? No, no, no. It was that my very first attempt was Mariana. Mariana. And then I wanted to Rosalind, the role that she experienced before I went to Julian. And then at the end it was...

[00:01:21] What I actually ended up doing was because I'm a bit older, I actually went back to what were the popular names were, back in the years, I originally born and sort of looked at those names. But I also looked at Facebook groups,

[00:01:33] the people I knew when I was young who I really liked as girls, I was women at the time. And there were two women I really really liked at school, and they had age-appropriate names. So I chose one of the other, and one of those was Julian.

[00:01:47] And that's how I ended up with it. And I really liked it. And so I don't mind Julian, because we'd jail a jelly or a jelly or a jelly with a jelly with a jade, it doesn't really matter. I like the sort of flexibility of it.

[00:01:56] So that's how I did main, but I think it takes a while to sometimes you get it. Sometimes you have to set a little bit of it, don't you? I think it's a fascinating subject, because I do think names are... I don't know.

[00:02:10] I think the more important than you're perhaps to think, because I'm probably told this before. I didn't give any thought to my thing. So when I first found the community on the chat rooms in the late nineties, that's a name to come down there.

[00:02:25] I wasn't going by that name anywhere else. It was like, no one was calling me. I didn't want to put my, what is my dead name in there? So I came up with a name that was had some phonetic similarities if we could put it that way.

[00:02:38] I'm not going to tell people what it was, but they start the stuff, Jay at the start, is not the similar to the sound it started to melt. I don't know, I'm not like that. So I thought for Jay, right?

[00:02:51] So I'd use that, but of course I'm not speaking to anybody in the news, and it's just a name that's coming up on the board. And I didn't give any thoughts. And when it came to the sort of transition,

[00:03:02] I've put so new student answers, if you stop stock with it, but I wish I'd given it more thought about you today. I mean, I don't know, Jay, I don't know. Well, Jay, I've been in for a whole bunch of my jam, which is cool.

[00:03:13] And it is a gas age, you know, it's pretty ageless in a sense of a lot of Jenny's or of my age of mid-50s. You know, don't think there's any point or the problem is this. When I'm on the phone and because my voice isn't great,

[00:03:31] if I'm asked for a day, so often I'd say Jenny and they go, Jenny, No, no, Jenny. Jerry? Yeah. Jenny, Jenny? No, Jenny, can't but Jenny. Or infamously when I was on Radio Stoke in the DJ, I was speaking to the, I was wondering if I had something.

[00:03:53] And then the DJ, the background, and the Q&A, and said, and we've got Jenny Harve here from Houston to talk about the ultimate strike. And I would. Hello everyone, I have to go afternoon, probably more rubbish of voice than that.

[00:04:08] And the DJ said, oh, no, everybody, that doesn't sound like a Jenny. So that is such a huge shock. Well, then made the whole interview with the audience. But I wish I'd given it more thought. I did have somebody come on middle mind.

[00:04:24] So I do have a middle mind, my middle mind here in the release. And it is net, I'm named after the ex-doubt city manager, Luma Farie. Oh, of course, I'm going to ask you one thing.

[00:04:35] Who is an absolutely hero in Stoke on Trent, who just has devoted his whole mind to support the homeless. And I'm not sure if you have this from Shelter City, is it developed? You want to Google his name? He's got some amazing stuff.

[00:04:47] So I'm not proud to be named probably only 50 year old, being left with slightly named after Luma Farie and Stoke on Trent. But have you got a middle danger? Or have you not thought no, no, no, in my dead name I did.

[00:05:02] But now I've got that dead there. We don't want to know about that. But yes, but it's we should just can't really be releasing this competition, Jim. Picture a middle name. Can't we do this for a listener's competition?

[00:05:15] Email him to tell us what you think of the middle name. It was hard enough coming up with this one. But it isn't interesting how people settle on them. So that's what you said is quite common, isn't it?

[00:05:25] You know, you might go say Michael, any of my end of this, Michaela. So a lot of people do take the equivalent other gender nature of their names. So you might be Michaela and take Michael. So that happens quite a lot, isn't it?

[00:05:37] It's it's quite common starting point, isn't it? And so good start. I think I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's not better to just go through different. On one hand, it does help people not dead name you because that was something that was sort of a thought.

[00:05:52] You know, it does help people if it's too close. I don't know, whether it's better to just go for big bands or the different to me. But the freedom of all the names in the world that. But I think sometimes when I'm genuine.

[00:06:05] Yeah, but I think sometimes you end up a lot of people say things like, oh, I was called the name my mother would have called me. They had a certain person of the other gender. A few people have told me that and that.

[00:06:18] And I think well, I think that's an interesting way of doing it because I don't think you've sort of, well, you've sort of, you've sort of maintained that sort of familial tradition. That's it's a way of thinking about it, isn't it? I did. I didn't do that.

[00:06:34] I think it's quite sweet to do. Hmm. I'm just trying to think if I can remember the point, which the must have been a point to act on my mom and dad. What my name was when I can't remember that point, that must have been a really awkward.

[00:06:46] Because it sort of knew I was trans before the reaction to your name because it was sort of something that I wanted to help you to do to them. So I must have had to go a little bit by the way,

[00:06:55] and this is what I've known as until. Yes, it's a fascinating thing to have to do. And I don't know if you had this. For many years, you know what I mean? You talk to yourself a little bit or go on,

[00:07:08] or call yourself, like, I want you to call yourself together. I talked to myself now. I struggled. Sometimes dead name was said, yeah, and you know, talking to yourself. Or if somebody, if somebody call my name out to somebody else,

[00:07:21] you know, in the street or you heard your name shouting. You would notice it like you would if somebody, from the start of January and this week, that's written notice it. And in certain cases, somebody shouts, my dead name in the street,

[00:07:33] even though it's 20 years into views there, my brain still has that connection. That's not disappoints me because I haven't completely lost it. It is still buried away in my circle there. Yes, I think it's fascinating subjects. But I just wish a bit more brave.

[00:07:48] I think it becomes, it takes it on and there's another thing which is, it takes on it. So there are names such defined generations on this. So I always remember talking to someone who said, if you meet someone called Susan, usually born in this period,

[00:08:00] if you could go on call Charlotte, usually born in the 80s, Charlotte and Victoria, they were the names of that. And I think there wasn't highly imagined name or Danny or something. And now we've got Harry's and Jacks because they're now coming all the way around.

[00:08:12] But I was back in fashion. Yeah, but when I was a kid, you wouldn't never call you Charles Harry and Jack. It was had very different connotations about them. But I think it's fascinating for a parent who has Christen someone, I was given some one-day name

[00:08:28] that they come back with a different name. And it must be, I mean, they often talk about parents who find it really difficult to change someone's name. And you can see why you can't, because he's definitely got that. He's the chosen one. And then I've said,

[00:08:45] that's not my name anymore, but I think you. I can definitely see how that might affect you. You know, would affect you as a parent to guess, you know, especially in a, probably thought about it and, you know, that's, because that's one thing a parent's definitely gives us.

[00:09:02] I don't think there's many children and babies that put their own name, but don't give them one rule. I've something on the birth certificate. But it's funny, you see, they say that because, so if you imagine a scenario of someone who has a daughter

[00:09:19] and the daughter gets married and the, and the sermon gets changed. So now you're talking to your surname, so you're talking to your child and your child and there's a different surname to you. And you have to address envelopes to,

[00:09:34] show my answer, address envelope to a different surname to your own. So actually, I do think that we should put parents a bit more slack sometimes when it comes to changing names. Because I think there is an, and it's, it's part of the identity as a family.

[00:09:49] It was me, me, the husband or me, the wife, me, the husband and our, our Jenny, for example, because in it was always that, and then suddenly we're going to call now it's, it's talquin or whatever it's going to be.

[00:10:03] It's, it's, it's a, it's a real, you talk about, it's about family identity that, you know. It's quite interesting, isn't it? Oh no, it's, you have course and I get, I get to get that, that emotion about the best, but of course that, that can never,

[00:10:18] you know, the need for somebody to have, you know, who's transitioning and need, you know, feels a new name. I think it's very interesting, I think, and this is where I think in some ways we have a bunch of, the friends that somebody's non-binary,

[00:10:34] but it doesn't necessarily change the names, they may not do. The main thing, may not. They might have a hard job of 13, and then you're younger. Then somebody like me is presenting very different, I'm using a different name really,

[00:10:51] sort of, I don't have to emphasize that so much for real, especially if it's user-day and that's obviously family and obviously masculine in that respect. I mean there are some names, sort of the cross-overs,

[00:11:01] but you know, less rate can be in my own or female things like that. But you know, people make a fair assumption that somebody called Jenny is female, right? Yes. So I think for people who don't change the names,

[00:11:17] I think they just, then have an extra barrier to over-plum in getting people to more readily, instinctively accept their new Jenny, and just to them because they've got to, you haven't got that. Interesting, because you often find the fashion is from different areas.

[00:11:36] So should I go back to when I was born to look at the fashion? Because I don't know if you know what the top-pip girl's name is at the moment, and I would never have thought that the most selected name

[00:11:48] over the last two or three years is Olivia. Yeah, just loads of emotions. And then just imagine what do you think the top-pip boy's name has been over the last few years? I did know that it might be a barrier of Jack, something that you mentioned.

[00:12:07] It's all of her. Olivia, are you sure? Olivia, are you sure? Olivia, are you sure? It's not interesting. No, I mean there's, in terms of the social look at, but nowhere is popular and Georgian, Theo and such like, but things like that,

[00:12:19] things like that either is popular as a girl's name. But I think sometimes one where there's an in-conngroity sometimes when you need someone who's in the 60s, and have gotten the name of someone who's,

[00:12:29] can only be from this year because it's a hop or whatever it might be. Yeah, and it doesn't matter isn't it? Because it's all part of your new brand. It's about setting yourself fresh, launching yourself into the world. Well that's a thing about, yeah.

[00:12:43] You could have, you could be, you know, in the late 60s, and you could have the name of, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a current pop star and it's, you've lost me because I did, I, like, I get stuck up to George Michael.

[00:12:57] So Taylor, yes. Taylor Swift. And that's a, you could have been famously a say there, it's not usually a say there. Well, there'd be loads of Taylor's in this generation. I love it. I talk about let's do betrayedens because I talk about some Smith,

[00:13:12] some Smith, no body or a betrayedens. And, and, and, and, there's a, you get an name, you get to where you used the, the word pop star that you saw in the field that you really old. Like, how to, how to, how to talk, how to judge,

[00:13:27] I say this in the training. And then we'll have to say, when I use that word, it just feels like an academic little bit. But, yeah, yeah, Taylor is going to be popular and, you know, I think it's really interesting these old fashioned names to come around.

[00:13:41] But, you know, the point about, you know, that friend to do something really exciting, interesting. And I regret not thinking about it as much as you saw. You're being a good, I think. You could, you could still change, you could change again. Oh, no, it's really good.

[00:13:55] Can you just roll, sort of, that idea? I know. 20 years, the sort of that me, people were, and that's why, I think someone said to me once that the reason they chose the name very similar to their previous

[00:14:08] jet dead name was actually what would be easier to change. This is the same. It's completely different than what I thought. No, that's true. And it's amazing. I can't see if you was able to put jail. So if you tried to change your name, it suits you.

[00:14:22] Really just suits you. So I don't know if you, like, can't see your name or your name because it has to do with that sort of work. Yeah. Well, this has been my name for a while now.

[00:14:31] And I remember, and I remember having to set out loud ones. And it was that was the point I noticed that I really liked it. And in fact, I didn't notice that really liked it. I just noticed it was me.

[00:14:41] And I think I'd always, I'd never felt the other names settled as well with me and, and also you have that thing done, you know, it's funny when you choose your own names because you know where the people were that name.

[00:14:53] So with my two other names that I discovered, I knew where the people who were like colleagues or clients or something and it's like, yeah, if they ever, if they, if I'd ever told them that at the time they'd be saying, oh, you've named yourself after me.

[00:15:09] Sort of thing and it's like, well, I wouldn't know how that sort of, you know, that can imagine the conversation. It's sort of quite weird as that. So no, definitely. But it's something that people don't think about because most people don't ever change the name. No.

[00:15:25] Most people who transition you a mind, particularly, will change the name. Yeah. And especially, I think if you change your name when you're much younger and you're much younger, you know, because I was, we had a, remember, we had a guest on some while ago.

[00:15:38] Ages ago, Dawn who talked about having a trans, trans child. And I've been doing, said at the time that they changed them in more than once because like, you know, there were 16 and then they went and they got to wait for you. I think with your movement, yeah.

[00:15:51] And I think it's, it's a much more fluid sort of concept, but I think it's quite interesting because it is, it is part of one's own, own brand. And I couldn't imagine you as anything else other than, you know, and people took out my brother, I believe.

[00:16:06] Everybody caught everybody. Everybody calls my brother Belly. It's not his name. Yeah. And he's never changed, it just became a nickname. And you know, it's name, Richard, but everybody calls him Belly. Yeah. My father was like, he had five names,

[00:16:22] and he was called a nickname of the fourth name. And, you know, it's like, how did you get there? And Stranger, you know, yeah, well, it makes a difference in all those politicians to choose the names that they're fitted. But, you know, Boris's Boris, because that's his brand,

[00:16:40] but his first name, Dullie's own name, isn't it? Boris DeFakill or, Yeah. So, where I'd brave on men is really called Stoo Ellen, but she was a very, very, very well-a. Yeah, I mean, Stoo Ellen.

[00:16:50] But I think, I think she might have been named after the Dullie's character. But I think Stoo Ellen, what she took once too well. So, you know, you can see that politicians do that because that is, again, branding for them, you know. And Boris, you think it is,

[00:17:04] Of course, they'll be called the letters from the rest of their life. Do you think that will be, Just in that one, I'll cast on. After she's recently shared a stage of Dullie Trump recently, and endorsed Dullie Trump. And she just became called Bump.

[00:17:19] Well, it was worse than Jenny was worse than that. It wasn't John Maltor, but it was Steve Bannon, who is the archetypal. Oh, yeah. One of the creators of the whole writing populist movement, called Realmshani and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, we've got that to subject.

[00:17:33] So, we have a sort of, I think the thing about names is, The thing I would say to you is just have fun and joy it. Because actually, I don't think, I don't think it's a sort of thing that you can, You can easily change,

[00:17:45] but it's probably just easy for Joan. And singing in out loud, I think that's the thing. Listen it. And hearing other people call you that name. You know pretty soon, if it's not comfortable, If it doesn't fit you. I still, I still know,

[00:18:01] Get a tiny finger joy when somebody calls me by my name. But Jenny, I shouldn't have preferred it. What would you prefer? What would you prefer if you had a choice to start again? Where would you start with? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

[00:18:14] But it doesn't stand, I guess I'd like to then brave enough to sound to something more unusual or say. Olivia, what I haven't. I don't know that Olivia would have been sitting there, Choosing I don't think to believe Olivia.

[00:18:29] I quite like the fact that the generally get short and to Jen. I don't know. It's quite, I think that's quite nice. It's a mostly a call to Jen. I get call Jenny as well, which is fine as well.

[00:18:40] I don't get called Jenny for very often at all, but if ever, because nobody knows that that's actually officially on my birth certificate. But if you look at these top hundred names, something as so old, I'm not sure if you can hear me.

[00:18:54] I don't know what about your fashion. Yeah, well, I hope a fee fee for good and a sick. You know, Evelyn, that's a nice thing. But some people do like to do these anti-roaches since that Robin and such like as well. Some people like to go that route.

[00:19:09] And I think that's quite an interesting thing. I didn't realize any high-eeey was up there. Well, not those, yeah, the words are high. It's an hour at school, or the book. Yeah, I mean, that's a really unusual name. That's quite, quite staggering, isn't it?

[00:19:27] So, but have a look at a few boys names. Oh, they were the boys names. No, they were clearly arching. I mean, look at that archy-stand Leo. Well, really, there's something, isn't there about, there's a generational thing when names come back.

[00:19:39] So, it's many of the names from the first world war of that. Interesting. Interestingly, if somebody would do a story or collect host transition names, what people have chosen for themselves rather than that, which is because people are parents, choosing names in a trend at the moment.

[00:19:57] They all have names, but the interesting to know, not anybody's got time, or it's worth anybody's time to do it. But I'd be fascinated to know what common names people, I don't know that I met and other trans women that's called Jen, for instance.

[00:20:11] So, you know, but then I haven't met enough people to know about. Have you ever met anybody with the exact same names you? So, I know I know they're Jenny Half. Do you? Well, I met, there was something, what a section it worked called Jenny Half,

[00:20:26] I found out, with those called Jenny Harvey. She's got a lot of shortage to learn now. And I, every time every morning is to go into the building and say, hello, Jenny Harvey, open that she would say hello Jenny Half about it.

[00:20:36] She just thought she was a bit bonkers. But yeah, it's quite funny to me to somebody with the exact same names. Yeah, that's how I was just looking. I was just Googling my name and actually seeing if there are many others. There's a professor.

[00:20:50] I think of the question. Yeah. And you make her be all in real good. I would job some things. I don't know about that. You've got to be all the perception of my name. Well, anyway, I don't know what she said.

[00:21:05] Everybody has a fascinating name that they'd like to contribute and suggest that they have chosen off their snob's struggling with the name of the one that tried to name out, feel free to send it down to us. And we promise to read them out.

[00:21:17] And you can see how the film. Jenny's been a good to talk to you this week. I shall see you there. I'm on that note. A live here. Is it a live here or a gym here? I'll see you on that note. We will see you next week.

[00:21:31] Bye-bye everyone. Thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox. It's been a joy to have you with us. If you want to make contact with us, you can contact us at Jillian at transvox.com.uk.

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[00:22:04] Our charity is called Beyond Reflections, which is a charity that provides support and counseling to trans people, nominary people and their friends and their families across the UK. And amazing charity doing some amazing work. Really important. So please if you can give. Great.

[00:22:21] And if you want to go and have a look at Beyond Reflections, it's beyond hyphenreflections.org.uk. But as I say, if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing, because we love to help the people who help us.

[00:22:32] Again, if you've got ideas for the show, things you'd like to ask us. Questions, comments, applause or Rick Bats, feel free to send it all into Gillian at BlunsVox.co.uk. Until the next time, goodbye. Bye-bye.