on acquiring additional names: for me two people come to mind who have multiple names, namely you and myself. (there are probably others, but my brain is lazy.) in your case, well, I think it helped that you were introduced to me as Talia, so as far as I was concerned that was your name, even if there were other people who called you something else.
in my case, well, it was trickier because I had to make a Big Huge Effort to tell people "okay, I'm Isabel now" which was kind of tricky. but people didn't have too much trouble with the name change; the pronoun change was trickier, because people don't think as much about pronouns. I also noticed that people who'd known me longer had more trouble adjusting, which makes sense.
but it's kind of different, because I don't go by my boy name in anything but bureaucratic settings any more. (one of these days I'm going to get it legally changed, but I'm lazy.) there was definitely a period where some people knew me as Isabel and some people knew me as (boy name), though, which really fucked with my head.
i've always found it entertaining that, despite what might be logically expected, i've never felt the need to use a gender-neutral or masculine name, though i easily could (lee or chris, say). so pronouns aren't a problem.
i haven't tried it on anyone who's known me forever and ever, and i probably won't, b/c it seems hard. friends get confused enough about my facebook profile. most of my problems occur when i'd usually be talia but can't, b/c someone else around already knows my real name and won't reliably switch for me. also, comments on lj.
i was hoping you'd answer, even though your situation is somewhat distinct from either mine or ntn's.
i'm actually just not using anything that isn't in public profiles. originally this was a conversation about trying to establish an alternate name at burning man, where playa names definitely happen, but for various reasons, it didn't work too well, and we were trying to figure out why i succeed as much as i do in an environment slightly more interested in Proper Identification.
i started being talia in order to post poems online as not-me; i was 16 and a babylon 5 fan, so i nicked the nick. i made high school publications often enough, and even just my first name is distinctive enough, that i can't hide behind several hundred other persons worth of google results, like most people. at first it was just an internet thing, for forums where a more manageable handle than goddess32585 was needed, and then i got to college and started running into sketchy situations where i became disinclined to give out my real name; unlike laura47, there aren't 46 others of me in the community, and i can generally be pegged by description alone. also, apart from being convenient when lying to skeevy guys*, my real name is long, hard to hear, hard to spell, and easily confused with other, more common, names, whereas talia is short and distinctive without being so weird that no one's familiar with it, so i find it much more practical when interacting with strangers.
*sure, you can have my phone number. no, of course it's not connected.
wow, googling your first name does turn up a lot of hits which are actually you. I guess I'm not surprised, though, since I can't think of anyone else with your first name.
and not having been familiar with babylon 5, I didn't realize at first that your chosen name was a reference to something.
in my case, well, it was trickier because I had to make a Big Huge Effort to tell people "okay, I'm Isabel now" which was kind of tricky. but people didn't have too much trouble with the name change; the pronoun change was trickier, because people don't think as much about pronouns. I also noticed that people who'd known me longer had more trouble adjusting, which makes sense.
but it's kind of different, because I don't go by my boy name in anything but bureaucratic settings any more. (one of these days I'm going to get it legally changed, but I'm lazy.) there was definitely a period where some people knew me as Isabel and some people knew me as (boy name), though, which really fucked with my head.
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i haven't tried it on anyone who's known me forever and ever, and i probably won't, b/c it seems hard. friends get confused enough about my facebook profile. most of my problems occur when i'd usually be talia but can't, b/c someone else around already knows my real name and won't reliably switch for me. also, comments on lj.
i was hoping you'd answer, even though your situation is somewhat distinct from either mine or ntn's.
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(i think what I'm asking is, is ntn going by "ntn" IRL now? or are you just using the usual convention of shortening people to their username?)
and why do you go by Talia? I never understood thaht.
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i started being talia in order to post poems online as not-me; i was 16 and a babylon 5 fan, so i nicked the nick. i made high school publications often enough, and even just my first name is distinctive enough, that i can't hide behind several hundred other persons worth of google results, like most people. at first it was just an internet thing, for forums where a more manageable handle than goddess32585 was needed, and then i got to college and started running into sketchy situations where i became disinclined to give out my real name; unlike laura47, there aren't 46 others of me in the community, and i can generally be pegged by description alone. also, apart from being convenient when lying to skeevy guys*, my real name is long, hard to hear, hard to spell, and easily confused with other, more common, names, whereas talia is short and distinctive without being so weird that no one's familiar with it, so i find it much more practical when interacting with strangers.
*sure, you can have my phone number. no, of course it's not connected.
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and not having been familiar with babylon 5, I didn't realize at first that your chosen name was a reference to something.
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"talia" - "of such a (female) kind" -
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I'm just wishing I had a more gender-neutral name to go by, at least sometimes. But nothing fits.
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