I think your name is a very personal choice, and only you can make it. The name you're considering is a big change from your current name, and if you feel as if you're becoming a different person, a vastly changed name is a good thing. If you're just becoming more of the person you've always been, though, then a sharp break in names could feel weird. If you'd like a similar name to your old name, I'd suggest "Gwen."
There are already a Gwen and a Gwenna in my local circle, otherwise I definitely would be considering something in the Gwen / Gwenevere / Genevieve / Gwenhwyfar family. :-) I think all of those names are pretty, and they've been in my head longer than most others.
I know my name has to be my personal choice, and I'm not asking others to pick for me (Boaty McBoatface is off the table), but hearing how others react to names I put out there as possibilities helps me figure out which aspects of a name are important to me. Do I care about keeping my initials? How awkward is it if I pick the same name as someone I already know? (My gut says probably enough so to worry about -- though one friend has said I can have her name because she's accustomed to not being the only one.) So I want a similar-sounding name to give friends cover when they slip, or a significantly different name to signal/reflect other changes? Can I get used to being four syllables instead of one? How important is it to me to pick a Greek name to honour my Greek Cypriot heritage -- or a Celtic name or a British name to reflect the rest of my heritage? How much do I care about being easily Googleable? (The last time I Googled myself, I think all but two of the hits on the first four pages were all me -- how much do I care about that? And for each name I'm considering, is there somebody else with an established web presence and a similar name doing music & photography that I'll get mistaken for online?) Does a name I like come off sounding too pretentious or trying-too-hard, and if so how much am I going to worry about that? How hard are some names to spell/pronounce -- and how much inconvenience over that am I willing to put up with for the sake of a prettier / better-fitting name? Each of those is a choice others can't make for me, too -- but looking at how I react to other people's reactions to possible names helps me sort out how to weight those different aspects, and once that much is a bit clearer to me, I'll have a much smaller list of names to pick from, and maybe one will stand out as a best fit. Maybe.
So it's not about 'votes' from my friends, so much as how I find myself reacting to their reactions, and how that helps me weed out what is really important from what I'm just overthinking.
I'm listening to the suggestions too. Some, I'm like, "nah, don't think that's me," but some I need to chew on for a while, imagine introducing myself to people, using it as a byline ...
I'm pretty sure I'm going to stop being first-initial-middle-name though. And that will fill weird and take some getting used to. But it will solve a bunch of problems I have with other people's poorly designed databases.
I think of you as dglenn rather than glenn arthur; how many of those hits are dglenn? i remember quite early on you nixed glenda or glenna because of the bad movie refs.
(totes understand the concept of bouncing off of others; it's often all but impossible for me to make even the simplest decision unless someone else puts forward a proposal.)
If I search for "Glenn Arthur", hits for an artist in California come up first. (Six or seven years ago it was more of a mix., IIRC.) Searching for the version I've been using in copyright notices, "D. Glenn Arthur Jr.", gets four pages that are all by me, quoting me, mentioning me, or linking to me (though for some reason www.ziggy.ai thinks that I am a five million dollar company with twelve employees ... WTF?!) followed by a short page that includes a couple of Dutch pages that don't even seem to have my name in them but matched according to Google anyhow for some reason. Searching for "dglenn" gets mostly people with a first or middle initial 'D' and the surname Glenn, but I do show up once in the first page of hits (plus image thumbnails).
My SCA name is Arthur d'Glenn -- I'm thinking of keeping the d'Glenn part of that (though maybe regularizing it to "de Glenn" or even translating it to "du Val", because d-apostrophe-consonant isn't a natural pattern in any languages I'm familiar with). That way folks at Pennsic who hail me as d'Glenn/de Glenn won't exactly be wrong (only a handful of folks there address me as Arthur currently). That runs back into the "make it easy to cover when people forget, or make a bigger difference to remind folks something has changed?" question ... but with kinda different stakes than my mundane name.
(It also did occur to me that if I'm changing the rest of my name, I could change my surname at the same time. I can see pros and cons to that, two of the cons being changing a tie to my siblings & paternal kin, and making it even harder for folks who've fallen long out to touch to find me again.)
(no subject)
I think your name is a very personal choice, and only you can make it. The name you're considering is a big change from your current name, and if you feel as if you're becoming a different person, a vastly changed name is a good thing. If you're just becoming more of the person you've always been, though, then a sharp break in names could feel weird. If you'd like a similar name to your old name, I'd suggest "Gwen."
Best of luck!
(no subject)
There are already a Gwen and a Gwenna in my local circle, otherwise I definitely would be considering something in the Gwen / Gwenevere / Genevieve / Gwenhwyfar family. :-) I think all of those names are pretty, and they've been in my head longer than most others.
I know my name has to be my personal choice, and I'm not asking others to pick for me (Boaty McBoatface is off the table), but hearing how others react to names I put out there as possibilities helps me figure out which aspects of a name are important to me. Do I care about keeping my initials? How awkward is it if I pick the same name as someone I already know? (My gut says probably enough so to worry about -- though one friend has said I can have her name because she's accustomed to not being the only one.) So I want a similar-sounding name to give friends cover when they slip, or a significantly different name to signal/reflect other changes? Can I get used to being four syllables instead of one? How important is it to me to pick a Greek name to honour my Greek Cypriot heritage -- or a Celtic name or a British name to reflect the rest of my heritage? How much do I care about being easily Googleable? (The last time I Googled myself, I think all but two of the hits on the first four pages were all me -- how much do I care about that? And for each name I'm considering, is there somebody else with an established web presence and a similar name doing music & photography that I'll get mistaken for online?) Does a name I like come off sounding too pretentious or trying-too-hard, and if so how much am I going to worry about that? How hard are some names to spell/pronounce -- and how much inconvenience over that am I willing to put up with for the sake of a prettier / better-fitting name? Each of those is a choice others can't make for me, too -- but looking at how I react to other people's reactions to possible names helps me sort out how to weight those different aspects, and once that much is a bit clearer to me, I'll have a much smaller list of names to pick from, and maybe one will stand out as a best fit. Maybe.
So it's not about 'votes' from my friends, so much as how I find myself reacting to their reactions, and how that helps me weed out what is really important from what I'm just overthinking.
I'm listening to the suggestions too. Some, I'm like, "nah, don't think that's me," but some I need to chew on for a while, imagine introducing myself to people, using it as a byline ...
I'm pretty sure I'm going to stop being first-initial-middle-name though. And that will fill weird and take some getting used to. But it will solve a bunch of problems I have with other people's poorly designed databases.
(no subject)
(totes understand the concept of bouncing off of others; it's often all but impossible for me to make even the simplest decision unless someone else puts forward a proposal.)
(no subject)
My SCA name is Arthur d'Glenn -- I'm thinking of keeping the d'Glenn part of that (though maybe regularizing it to "de Glenn" or even translating it to "du Val", because d-apostrophe-consonant isn't a natural pattern in any languages I'm familiar with). That way folks at Pennsic who hail me as d'Glenn/de Glenn won't exactly be wrong (only a handful of folks there address me as Arthur currently). That runs back into the "make it easy to cover when people forget, or make a bigger difference to remind folks something has changed?" question ... but with kinda different stakes than my mundane name.
(It also did occur to me that if I'm changing the rest of my name, I could change my surname at the same time. I can see pros and cons to that, two of the cons being changing a tie to my siblings & paternal kin, and making it even harder for folks who've fallen long out to touch to find me again.)