Naw, It Ain't Your Business To Know Jazz's Or ANY Transperson's Old Name

Y'all know I have much love for my baby sis Jazz.  I keep up with her activist exploits on the blog and I'm looking forward to the day I finally get to meet her.

What prompted this post was this question I received in my comment feed from some person who shall remain nameless.

I have a question that you don't have to answer if you don't want to or feel uncomfortable with answering but do you know Jazz's original male name

Oh, I'm going to answer this question alright, but not in the way you expected me to.

Whatever Jazz's birth name was is not yours, mine or anybody else's business.  Even if I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't put that information out there because she's a minor for starters and we have real haters out there that in many cases seek to do harm to us. I've also seen far too often in my time in this community that when that information gets out it tends to be used negatively by our detractors.  

Frankly, I like seeing news stories when they are written about Jazz that don't have the derailing line 'born as ___________'  or 'legal name is __________' in them.  

All you need to focus on is the fact that Jazz is a happy, healthy, well adjusted girl like us who is trying to live as normal a teenaged girl's life as possible.

She just happens to be a teen who has met a former president,. lobbied the US Soccer Association, been interviewed by Barbara Walters twice, spoken at various conferences, been featured in a documentary, appeared in a movie, and has a worldwide community who loves her and has her back.

A trans person's old name fall into none of your business territory along with whether we've had genital surgery.   Focus on the name that fits who we are now and what we told you what our name is to begin with.  

Your desire to know that personal information does not trump our desire as transpeople to keep that information private.  It's why I proposed an adjustment to the AP Stylebook guidelines concerning writing stories on trans people that prohibits the practice of injecting those old names into the story because transphobic ignorance follows.

So naw, it ain't your business to know what Jazz's or any transperson's old name is because it is not germane to who we are now. 

My 'Real' Name Is What I Tell You It Is

When we trans people go through a gender transition, we spend a lot of time and thoughtful contemplation considering what our new name will be that matches our gender presentation. 


So when we hear someone ask us the question "No, what's your 'real' name?", which is a roundabout way for that cisperson to broach the subject of what was the name given to us at birth that no longer fits our lives, it can be irritating, unsettling and insulting to the trans person. 

Read my lips and this next sentence.   My real name is what I tell you it is.

So use it, and get used to having it cross your lips on a regular basis. Calling me or any other transperson by a name that doesn't fit the way we live our lives now is not only disrespectful, if you do so in front of a person who didn't know our gender business, you have just inadvertently outed us by doing that. .If that person is a transphobe, you may have just set the wheels in motion for that person to experience discrimination at their place of employment or set them up for a hate crime.

And using a transperson's name in all situations is to them vitally important and a sign that you respect them.

One of the things that pisses me and many transpeople the hell off is when media people reporting on trans issues or transpeople use that 'born as _____"  line in a story about them, put their chosen name in quotation marks or ask them that question during an interview.  

It's unnecessary, and you don't do it to Cher, Muhammad Ali, Tom Cruise, or any other celebrity or cis person who has changed their name for whatever reason.   So why do you feel you need to know what the transperson in question's old birth name was?   That's in none of your business territory just like what genitalia we are currently sporting between our legs.

So the next time you think about asking a transperson what their 'real name' is, don't.  Our real name is what we tell you it is.  Accept that fact and move on.

You Respect A Cisperson's Right To Choose Their Name, Why Not A Transperson?

Why do cisgender people feel they have the right to disrespect transgender people by refusing to use or acknowledge the names we have chosen for ourselves?

Would you disrespect Cherilyn Sarkisian that way despite the fact she's gone by the name of Cher for several decades now? Cassius Clay changed his to Muhammad Ali, and only a right winger who hates on him will do so today.

Prince for a few years changed his to an unpronounceable symbol, and yet people didn't refer to him as Prince Rogers Nelson, they called him The Artist.

You don't call Sting by his given name of Gordon Sumner or bring up Ice Cube's birth name of O'Shea Jackson. If you want an interview with Tina Turner better not call her by her birth name of Anna Mae Bullock, much less write "Tina Turner" in quotation marks as some media peeps have done with the names of transgender people.

A new name carries a lot of weight for a transgender person. It not only signifies to the world our desired gender identity, in many cases much thought went into the process of us selecting our new names.

Yes, we realize that sometimes it's a major adjustment when you've known someone as Alexander, for example and now have to get used to Alexis standing in front of you in feminine attire and living her everyday life as the woman she was born to be.

We're not going to get mad at you for the occasional stumble in that situation. But when you know the deal, and insist on calling a transwoman by her old name just to be mean, catty, or flex your cisgender privilege then it's on like Donkey Kong.

It's not only perceived as a major insult by that transperson, it says to us you don't care about or respect us as people. It could also put us in serious danger of being the victim of a hate attack. If one of our haters is in earshot who didn't know our business before you did that hears you, you've just outed us to the world as a transperson.

If he's transphobic, you have just set the wheels in motion for a possible hate crime if that person decides to take some of his life frustrations out on the transperson you just outed.

So show some respect and use the new name. You'll not only be showing us support by doing so, it's greatly appreciated by the transperson in question as well.

What's In A Transperson's Name?

When a mother is pregnant with her child, one of the things that they think long and hard about during their pregnancy as soon as they have a general idea of the presumed gender of the child is the name.

African-American mothers, as descendants of Africans, realize that there's great importance to the name you choose for your child. It says a lot about the individual, their family and their connection to the community at large.

They spend a lot of time carefully putting together combinations of names, poring through various baby name books, and considering various factors in consultation with the father and sometimes the soon to be grandparents before coming up with that combination of three names that gets entered onto your birth certificate soon after you exit the birth canal and enter the world.

Names carry a lot of weight in our binary gendered society, and transpeople know this reality all too well. It's why one of the first things we do when we finally start making those moves to transition is choosing a name that accurately represents who we are. It's one reason why our fundamentalist enemies spend so much time making it hard for us to legally change our names and the gender markers to go with those names.

I believe that some of the negative friction that happens between transpeople and their mothers is fueled in one small way by the fact that many of us unilaterally choose our new names as part of the process.

Granted, some of that friction is caused by the parents rejecting their child in the early wake of the child's announcement of their wish to transition. But sometimes when we logically paint the worst-case scenario for transition and presume that we're going to get cut off from our immediate family's love and it doesn't happen, then I submit that one way to facilitate bonding of our families into the transition process is to allow them that input in the name change decision.

One of the things I would do differently in my own transition if I got the chance to start it over again would be to give my mother and my baby sister some input in choosing my new name. My brother and I got some input in choosing my baby sister's name, so I should have done the same and allowed sis some input in choosing my new one just to be fair.

One mild issue with my intersex roommate and her mother was that when it was time to choose a name that matched her new femme presentation, she went a different direction than choosing the feminine derivative of her old male name she was given at birth by mom. As V's mother saw it and told me in a phone conversation we'd had, she was hurt that her daughter didn't go that route. Some mothers see it rightly or wrongly as a rejection of them.

When I was going through the process of choosing my new femme name, I definitely wanted to keep my MKR initials, since they were my link not only to my family, but mom as well. I also decided to choose a feminine name which would have been popular during the decade I was born. I'd been to far too many gender conferences and attended gender group meetings in which 20-something, 30-something, 40-something, 50-something, and 60-something year old transwomen were running around with or had changed them to currently popular names of the 80's, 90's and 2K's that really didn't fit the person that was standing before me.

I knew too many people in the transgender community back home that had the feminine derivative of my old name and wanted to find another feminine name starting with M. I'd already settled on my middle name starting with K, which was a combination of the first and middle names of a female cousin who is more like a sister to me and I spent a lot of time in her and her two sisters lives on one level or another.

I then thought about the qualities I associated with various feminine names, and the name that I thought best fit the woman I was evolving into and wanted to project to the world while sticking to my 'it had to start with M' prerequisite.

One name that popped into my head as I was trying out various 'M' names with the femme middle name I'd chosen for myself was Monica. Most of the Monica's I'd grown up with or gotten to know were classy, smart, talented and beautiful women. I liked the name even more when I read one definition for it.

Possibly (Greek) "solitary" or (Latin) "to advise; nun". Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, prayed for her son and saved him from self-destruction. As a result, Saint Augustine became one of the greatest saints in history. The name is popular with Catholics.

As an activist, writer and blogger I definitely do a lot of advising. Writing tends to be a solitary activity along with my tendency to engage in a lot of solitary thinking. Some of the work I'm trying to do is along the lines of getting transwomen to avoid self-destructive things and behaviors. My spirituality is a major component of who I am as a person. I'm happiest when I'm either writing or curled up with a good book, and I'm a Phenomenal Transwoman to boot.


That's how I arrived at my new name. It not only seems to fit quite well with who I am, who the people that meet me see and the woman I'm continually evolving to be, I'm comfortable with it as well.

If you sat ten different transpeople down and asked them how and why they chose their name, you'd get ten different answers as to how they conducted the thought processes or the myriad reasons that eventually led to their new name. It's why we transpeople go off on the media so much when they disrespect us by putting our new names in quotation marks or parentheses or don't use the proper pronouns in describing us in various news stories.

We go through a lot just to get to the point where we not only evolve to become the persons we are, but thinking about the various ancillary aspects of manhood and womanhood.

So what's in a transperson's name? Plenty of hard, solid thinking, blood, toil, drama, sweat, tears, hope, history, roller coaster emotions and prayerful consideration that it will lead to the respect that we demand for ourselves and from others in the world around us.



TransGrior Note: women in photos are actress Monica Calhoun and singer Monica Arnold