The question is open to anything that anyone wants to share about changing one’s name (e.g. social, familial, or legal proceedings), but in particular I’m most interested in what the personal process of deciding on a particular name was like for you. Was there one that just “clicked”? Did you try out different names until you found one that fit? Did you choose the name based on meaning, aesthetics, association, or something else entirely? How did it feel to change your own name in your own head? How did it feel when others started using it to refer to you? What do you like most about the name you chose?

Also, I don’t want to pressure anyone to share their name since that is very identifying information, so feel free to share details of your experience without sharing your name itself — unless that’s something you’re comfortable with putting online here.

In text posts, like this one,, we can see the name of user who created it. But if it is a link post then it shows site name in it's place. To see who created that post we have to open the comments page. Site name can be moved to article details line where the date of publishing and word count is. That way both info can be shown.

Reason. Both information is shown at same place currently 1. which can confuse new users. for example. Notice after four times mentioning site name there is a username. 2. both can't be shown together.

I don’t like my name, and I never really have. It has nothing to do with ‘tomf’.

My main questions are:

1. How did you go about choosing the new name?
2. How did you manage/roll out the new name?
3. What unforeseen challenges came up?

My main concern is that I’ll settle on a ‘cool’ sounding name and that people will think it’s weird. While I want something normal, I do have some parameters:

1. The name should be free for the .com and major social media
2. I don’t want a main ‘S’ sound, since I don’t like how I say it.
3. I am hoping to have something simple to use over the phone. I use ‘Tom’ for Starbucks and reservations because it’s clear, short, and not me.

Anyway, has anybody done this? Any feedback is great, but I am more focused on changing my first name.

Pardon the crappy tags.

... exactly the same as the old name.

Yep, "lgbt" won the vote from this thread. That may not be a surprise to many people, but this has still been a worthwhile process to go through. There were some concerns expressed about the name, and it was only fair that we gave everyone a chance to have a say.

Of course, not everyone will be happy with this outcome. I saw a variety of voting responses which made that clear. At one extreme, I saw a couple of responses with "lgbt" marked as #1, and all other names marked as #N/A. At the other extreme, I saw a couple of responses with the other seven names ranked from #1 to #7, and "lgbt" marked as #N/A. Someone else marked any name which even included as "lgbt" as #N/A. So, there are definitely strong opinions for and against "lgbt".

But the vote was convincing. Nearly half of all people (43 out of 87) put "lgbt" as their first choice, two-thirds of people had it as their 1st or 2nd choice, and more than three-quarters of people had it as their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice. As I checked the results occasionally throughout the period of voting, "lgbt" consistently had about 50% of the first choices. And, counting all the ranked votes, "lgbt" got a final score of 6.98 out of a theoretical maximum of 8. The next closest names - "lgbtq" and "lgbtplus" - were scored at about 5.5 out of 8.

Here is the published result on Survey Monkey, and a screenshot of the detailed count.

In English-speaking countries, the name "John Smith" is often used as a placeholder name because it's boring and common: John is one of the most common first names among English-speaking men, and Smith is the most common surname/family name among English-descended people. Together, they make a very boring and bland name.

What's the equivalent in your country? What's the most boring, common name? What do people use as a placeholder when they need to use a name that isn't a real person but looks like it could be a real person?

Shortly after my son was born I started calling him "Buddy." I love it and he answers to it like a name now. My daughter is two and she calls him Buddy, which I think is the most adorable thing ever.

I'd like to do this with my daughter, but I'm not really a fan of things like "honey" or "sweetheart," though I do wind up calling her sweetheart pretty frequently.

Buddy is like friend, which is what I'm going for, but that's taken already. What else could I use?

There has been occasional concern about the name of this group: ~lgbt. Some people believe it's not inclusive enough, some people think it's a bit clinical, some people think it's not expressive enough, and so on. Nothing major, just minor concerns here and there.

However, Deimos has said he'll rename this group if we want to.

So I'm here to find out what we might want to change the name to.

This will be a two-step process. This thread is for gathering suggestions, and discussing the pros and cons of the various suggestions. After I've collected a list of everyone's suggestions, I'll then post a second thread with a survey in it, for us all to vote on those suggestions.

But, for now... what do you think this group should be called? (And it's okay if you think it should be called ~lgbt!)

The current list of suggestions:

• ~lgbt
• ~lgbtq
• ~lgbti
• ~lgbtiq
• lgbt+ [not usable for technical reasons]
• ~lgbtplus
• ~gsm
• ~queer
• ~rainbow

Since the website has a username and hundreds we were presented with an opportunity to pick a really nice or cool username on a site that I believe will rival reddit.

I just picked my favourite character. I wanted to pick my first name (which I am 100% sure is not taken) but kind of decided to go towards more anonymity. I decided not to use my reddit username because no one else literally uses it so I will always have an option to make a new account with reddit username

Did you think on that too or just used your reddit username?

EDIT: I have actually changed my username from "ironman" to "metal" since i made this post. Now im like super happy and excited about my "identity" here