Deadnames and Santa’s Naughty List
![deadname](https://i0.wp.com/ordinary-times.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/1024px-Change_of_Name_Decree-e1638634507598.jpg?resize=720%2C361&ssl=1)
Change of Name Decree, Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet?
—William Shakespeare
So, what is a “deadname”? According to Merriam-Webster
“The name that a trans gender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning. Many trans people will go to great lengths to prevent people from finding out their deadnames, destroying irreplaceable photos and documents in an effort to ensure that who they really are is the only identity most will remember.”
Now, the definition is kind of narrow in my opinion, focusing on strictly trans persons. Basically, anyone who changes their name has the new name and a deadname. Two famous examples:
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- Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. better known as Muhammad Ali
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- Marion Robert Morrison better known as John Wayne
Some people will ask, what’s the deal? Why change your name?
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- For trans people it is to take a name that better reflects who they are. A trans man won’t get along very well in our society named Sue, nor will a trans woman get along very well named Frank.
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- Domestic violence survivors will occasionally change their name to further distance themselves from an abuser and to make it harder for the abuser to find them again.
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- Maybe you were named after a parent who turned out to be a famous megalomaniac and people are constantly “must be hard to live with that name” or “are you related to?”
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- Maybe you don’t want to be called fifteen anymore because you are Samuel Robert Applebaum the 15th.
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- How about witness protection?
My point is the reasons are as numerous as the people who go through the legal proceedings to do it. Some states make the process rather simple: fill in this form, pay a fee, wait, done; others require hundreds if not thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs. Now let’s not forget these same people also have to change every identifying document—including their birth certificate—all of their bills, car titles, deeds, bank accounts, credit cards, etc.
Now that you’ve made it this far, why am I here on this topic? For starters we are in the holiday season, families have the hardest times with deadnames and continuing to use them. Honestly I can cut families some slack here as long as the slips are accidental. When the use is intentional to anger or upset someone though? That is not acceptable.
The other issue is some people think knowing a person’s deadname gives them some sort of power over the person who changed their name, and in some cases it does. A deadname can elicit some very weird responses in some people and violence in others. The reactions are what the user wants though, because it makes them feel bigger, surer of themselves, or proves some point they have made up in their head. The big thing constantly using a deadname does is make the user seem like a jerk.
So, this holiday season remember: don’t be a jerk, just because you know someone’s “secret name.” Use the new name. If someone is presenting as a woman, they are a “she” and presenting as a man they are a “he”—I won’t get more in depth than that as I’m not real sure what some of the other pronouns even mean. The big takeaway here is be nice, be human, be better; regardless of your personal beliefs friends, family, and co-workers, are not gathering to hear you belittle someone or to make a scene.
Don’t end up on Santa’s Naughty List because you weren’t nice.
There’s a certain contingent that, if things are consistent, will go through the roof when they read this post. They have enough trouble with honoring someone else’s preferred pronouns, and here you’re asking people to respect someone else’s preferred proper nouns.Report
You’re just trying to gaslight us after this perfectly reasonable article about relocated witnesses coming home for Christmas.Report
I believe you misspelled “needle.”Report
Why? My wife was allowed to change her name on her Social Security account and drivers license when she got married (just like tens of millions of Americans) despite no court ever taking note of the fact. To the best of my knowledge, she wasn’t restricted to just changing her middle and last names — she could have changed her first name and it would have been fine. When she went back to college, no one questioned the transcripts with a name that didn’t match the application except for “Mary” (nor did they demand copies of any other legal documents). Nor were there any problems when some of her ancestors left bequeaths to her pre-marriage name.
I had a nickname bestowed upon me when I was a sophomore in high school. When I went off to college, I had to relearn to respond when someone said “Mike” or “Michael”.Report
“My wife was allowed to change her name on her Social Security account and drivers license when she got married (just like tens of millions of Americans) despite no court ever taking note of the fact.”
Fun story there. I’m from Texas, and back in…2001? 2002?…a pair of my friends got married. They swapped last names.
So they pop on down to the local DPS with their marriage license in hand the first morning after the honeymoon and….she walks out having changed her last name. He walks out…not.
He was told that it’d require a court order.
So he goes home, asks some friends (including a lawyer) who pulls up relevant Texas law (it is Texas in 2002ish, so who knows?) — which uses the word “spouse” not the word “wife”, and said lawyer assures them that it’s very much gender neutral. In fact it had been amended several years before SPECIFICALLY to make it “spouse” and not “wife”.
Despite having a copy of the law, it took three visits that day, the intervention of a State Rep, and then the State Rep personally harassing the head of the Texas DPS to call that office and force them to remain open past 5:00 on a Friday, to get it done for him.
Despite there being an absolutely clear law, a specific process for marriages, and the fact that his wife had just waltzed in and out that morning 20 minutes.Report
There’s a lot of words that are written in the law books. This is called a “prediction.” Maybe, if you’re generous, it’s “guidance.” What the people who administer governmental power will actually DO, however — THAT’S the law.
This, by the way, is how the concept of “legal realism” was first defined to me.Report
The law was explicitly changed to allow it, and DPS had sent out guidance when it was changed.
Everyone just assumed this particular office hadn’t processed a male name change (or rather, no one there that day had) and nobody wanted to bother.
If the process wasn’t at least a cool grand to do through the Courts, that might have worked. But people will make an AWFUL lot of phone calls to avoid showing up to court and shelling out that kind of money.Report
“The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.”Report
When I worked for the Colorado legislature I got stuck, on more than one occasion, with having to do the presentation to this committee or that of, “Yes, you appropriated money for a unified software system to save counties large amounts of money because every intake location could handle Medicaid, and food stamps, and state child care, and TANF income assistance, and a variety of tuition assistance programs. But there are counties hiring 25% more staff than they need, in order to put separate application offices for each of those individual programs miles apart, in order to make it more difficult and degrading for poor people to receive the assistance the law says they are eligible for.”Report
My first born legally has a very different name in Poland.
The Registrar, refused to believe that anyone would use a “last name” as a middle name. This is in spite of presented with the birth certificate with the official translation and a new baby.
They argued about it for quite a while and my wife didn’t win.
I don’t understand what the problem was, something about social conventions.Report
Don’t be coy. Name names. I literally have no idea to whom you might be alluding.Report
No, he means me, because I’m a sadist.Report
Please don’t ask him to name online names of people who don’t want people to use different names. This is the only time/space continuum we’ve got, and no one really knows how much it can handle.Report