Name Games

So I am now back from my vacation, and had one of those little thoughts-to-travel by.

We handed over our passports/miscellaneous information at the border crossing, and one of the things they tend to do is read off the names to make sure that people respond properly to the name (it's a really shaky way of checking for fake ID, but it's something, I guess).

I have never responded consistently to my legal name, even when I used it regularly. I haven't used it socially for on the order of magnitude of two-plus years.

It's just a weird, weird place to be in, expected to react to a name that was never really mine, which I don't even pretend to use in my real life anymore.

Which of course left me pondering the complexities of people who change their names for whatever reasons, and the transfolks I know, and ... yeah.

Names. They matter.