Transitioning: Choosing my name

You wouldn't think choosing a new name would be work.

You're issued a name at birth by your folks. You get used to it and keep it and it comes to suit you. Or you change it.

But when you're changing everything, including the big Change, the name has to come along for the ride. While I've dated a guy named Beverley and known women named Johnny and Tommy, I wanted something unambiguously male.

Angelia Marie is a lovely name. It has served me well in many capacities. Yes, the I is deliberate, no it is not pronounced. Screening technique is one of the many services.

But when it came time to choose, I put some restrictions on the name: Nothing obviously ethnic. I would look ridiculous as a Haruto or Pablo or Kazim or Bai or Vladimir or Antonio.  No Hebrew based names either, because those are Biblical and I am Not El's People. Which killed Michael, my alias for years, and Andrew.

My people protested, wondering what was left. I reminded them we still had Norse, Germanic, some French, Greek or Russian and Celtic.

So we decided on the path of least resistance. Nicholas. It's Greek, meaning Victory of the People.
Nick has been a steady and useful muse, and with the personality takeover by that particular alternative personality, it worked.
These days it's become Papa Nick or Nikolai, as my daughter is dating a Nick.

The middle name was trickier. I needed a name with no S to break up the one ending Nicholas and the one starting Sparrow. Harder than it sounds, given that S is the 6th most common letter in the English language. We strongly considered Wyatt, which I like. It has connotations of manliness and means "powerful in war." But in the end, Rowan won.

Rowan is a tree, a mountain ash, and it is the witchiest of witch trees. It has been used for protection and spell work for centuries. "Rowan tree, red thread, hold the witches all in dread." It doesn't grow in the Sunny Southland where I live, but needs more cold. Shame, I was hoping to plant some, and make rowan jelly.

Rowena was my magickal name, given me by the Green Man himself, early in my walk on the pagan path. Part of witchery is knowing things and knowing names for things, and I couldn't do that until I had a name of my own, he told me. It was important to me to keep that.

Sparrow, I will keep as long as Mudd keeps me.

Nicholas Rowan Sparrow.
It's who I am becoming.