What's in a name?

Dec 12, 2009 19:50

I was always of the opinion that using your real name as a screen name was boring. My mother and her friends used to spell each other's names backwards in college and use them as nicknames, so I decided to do it on the internet. Up until earlier this year, my screen name was rehtaeh11. I used that SN long before I had any idea that I was transsexual. Now that I look back on it, I think it was a way of making my name sound more gender-neutral before I even realized my own gender identity. Even so, people did notice the backwards spelling on occasion. Needless to say, it had to be replaced.

I had decided that my male name was going to be Hector. This is strange in and of itself, because most transsexuals pick a name that is the farthest thing from the name they were born with. But I thought, 'If I choose a completely different name like "Justin" or "Michael", then I might not react to someone calling my name because it wouldn't sound familiar to me. Well, that wouldn't do at all, would it?' And you know, for some reason Hector just clicked. I was also considering Heath and Henry, but I didn't want people to think that I had named myself after Heath Ledger so soon after his death (although I do respect him as an actor), and I absolutely did not want people from the UK calling me Harry. (Because of my glasses, and a failed hairstyle about a year ago, I've already been compared to Harry Potter. Terrible.)

Besides, I had always loved the character "Hector" from the Trojan War in greek mythology. He was a brave and noble man who died an honorable death. The mental image I had of him standing up for his people and his values resonated with me, it was something I could identify with. Once I learned that the meaning of this name was, "holding fast", I was sold.

Why rotten? My sister, Sonnet, used to use the word rotten to express her dislike of something, in much the same way you would use a made up word like "darn" or "freakin'" to replace a curse word like "damn" or "fucking". So instead of saying, "that stinks!" or "that's horrible!" She would say, "that's rotten!" Eventually the "that's" got dropped, and whenever something frustrated her she would cry, "ROTTEN!"

It's obviously a self-depreciating name, but I've always had a very self-depreciating sense of humor. My lifestyle choices are not popular with my family. As most of you are aware, my family is very conservative and religious. For me to be transgendered and omnisexual is a frustrating thing to them. In part, I suppose I choose this name as a way of saying, "Yes, I understand that you don't approve of my choices. I'm doing what you would consider to be a very naughty thing. But I'm going to do it anyway, with or without your approval. Because I know that you love me and you want me to be happy, even if you don't understand what that means."

So, spell Hector backwards and it's "rotceh", which I noticed, is only two letters away from being "rotten". I originally used the idea on Gaia Online, where I'm rotceh_the_ROTTEN. For my yahoo email account, I wanted something shorter and easier to type, so I dropped the rotceh and added a 1 at the end, creating, the_rotten1. I went on to change my LJ, IJ, and dA, accounts to this name. Still haven't finished with y!Gallery yet. I don't really spend much time there.

name, rotten, nickname, screen name, hector

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