My only objection to the concept of dead names happens to be the label, i.e. I hate the concept being called a dead name. My personal experience with old names makes me think “dead” is wishful thinking, especially when the dead never seem to be content to lie sleeping in their graves. Reality seems to be more zombie name, which keeps coming back even when you thought you’d killed it off for sure.

The dictionary seems to reserve dead names for transgender folks. I’m cisgender, and my disused name came about not as part of a transition but rather wanting to make a clean break with a name that was used to represent me in the past. My parents called me by my middle name, which was already weird in my hometown. Adding complexity, that name was an uncommon one for people but more frequently associated with dogs. Maybe if it was just an odd name and I was only trying to go the route of first-initial-middle-name alone, I could have slid by without being noticed by the sociopaths in my class. However, my mother also prided herself on saving money by cutting hair at home, which she had no training in and wasn’t very good at. Even uncreative bullies noticed I had a dog’s name and a Beatles-ish bushy haircut. Those made for fun times over the better part of a decade, and I have lasting resentment over it.

Because I knew it’d be impossible to change my name while still in the same community of shitbirds in my hometown, I waited until after I graduated high school and left town. I started going by my given name when I registered for classes at my university. Nobody knew me there, so the switch was painless and immediate–with them anyway. My mother didn’t start to respect my wishes for about 25 years or so, and she still stumbles frequently. We don’t talk much.

As for the old name, I don’t go to my hometown anymore, so I don’t encounter many folks who’d still know me by that old name. After thirty-plus years, it doesn’t bother me as much, but it also is pretty foreign to me–it’s not been me for quite some time.