not everybody is up to date on: I have been on HRT for about five years, my pronouns are she/her
I'd no idea. Mazel tov! Welcome to the team!
Eftychia (Ευτυχια, /eff-ti-KHEE-a/
Wait, both the second and fourth letters are an upsilon, and it's pronounced /eff-ti-KHEE-a/? Huh. Are all those words that start with the "eu" prefix supposed to sound like /eff/?
I think it's phonetically lovely, especially with the χ sound, but I don't expect most Americans to be able to cope with that phoneme, and I find the pronounciation and emphasis non-obvious from the spelling. You're going to have a lot of trouble with people not understanding you on the phone.
What would your mother have named you if you had been AFAB? Is your mother still alive and well? Are you talking to her about your transition? If she's good with it, it might be worth talking to her about it. In most societies around the world, including ours, parents give names to their children as a sort of blessing, a way of expressing their hopes and aspirations for their child. If she is not hostile to your transition, you might ask her for the name she would have given you if she had known – her blessing for her daughter.
The eu->ef thing seems to be a Modern Greek vs Ancient Greek thing. (Either that or it's a Cypriot Greek vs Mainland Greek difference, but I think Greek Greeks do it too. I'm not 100% sure.) So Λευκωσια (Nicosia) is pronounced /Lef-ko-si-a/, and "ευχαριστω" ("thank you") comes out "efharistoh". Since the Greek I studied in middle school was Ancient, it took me ages to figure out how to spell most of the words my relatives were saying, and I'm still stumped on several, but I finally for the "ef is spelled ευ" part down.
Yeah, part of why I asked for folks' reactions to it was to gauge just how big the spelling/pronunciation problem is going to be, and how attached to the name anyhow from how I feel about hearing that problem voiced by others. (Makes it less abstract, if that makes sense.)
My mother (who died in May) did not remember what she would have named me if I'd been AFAB. I did ask. I really, really wish she'd been able to tell me.
I know that my parents were planning to name me Mikaelakis or something similar (see previous remark about spelling) but changed their minds after they heard my father's mother try to pronounce it, deciding it was safer just to name me after Dad. So the name "Michelle" occurred to me, but I'd have to be really attached to that name to ask somebody very important to me to get over their own issues with that name, and I like it but I don't think I like it enough. And because I was baptized Orthodox I had to be baptized under a Biblical or church name (which neither of my given names are), so they picked Κλημης for that (which winds up sounding approximately "Gleemus" the way Mom said it, and took me forever to figure out the spelling of so I could Google it) and it turns out to be the Greek form of "Clement", so of course I considered "Clementine", but that made me sound like an anachronism. I might use Clementine (with a French pronunciation) as an SCA name, since I found an SCA-period composer named Clementine de Bourges.
But yeah, I really wish I knew what my parents would have named me if I'd been AFAB.
My mother (who died in May) did not remember what she would have named me if I'd been AFAB. I did ask. I really, really wish she'd been able to tell me.
Awwww. :(
And because I was baptized Orthodox I had to be baptized under a Biblical or church name (which neither of my given names are), so they picked Κλημης for that
Right, everyone in my sweetie's mother's family has at least two names, the one the Anglophones could cope with, and their Greek names.
At the first Christmas dinner I spent with them, I asked tn3270's mother if her name – which was only two syllables and didn't sound at all Greek to me – was short for something, and she said yes it was, and told me her full name (four syllables). Which blew away tn3270, who had no idea his mother had any more name than that. She had literally only ever used her two-syllable, easy-for-Americans name, on all official paperwork since registering for kindergarden. But apparently it's not what is on her birth certificate.
Amusingly, Aunt C has a perfectly Greek – even Classical – name she was known by as her American name. She just had an even Greeker name that I first heard about in the Greek parts of her funeral service.
Anyways, so, technically, you don't have a naming problem.
(It does kind of liberate me a bit, because I can pick whatever difficult name appeals to me, but tell people, "you can call me [easyname]". It does mean I have to like both though, so yeah, two problems.)
I am reminded of my cousin Lia, whom I only ever heard called Lia until I went to Cyprus and misspelled her name "Lea" and was corrected with the explanation, "It's short for Evangelia." It wasn't a surprise to anyone else though, as when I saw her house there was a sign on the fence with her full name on it, advertising that she's an architect. (This is my cousin the Timelord. I visited three of the four houses she designed (she usually does parks), and each one was bigger on the inside, two of them quite dramatically so. I figured out some of the tricks she'd used -- leading to a "You spotted that?! Only other architects ever catch that!" moment -- but I couldn't account for most of it. She was amused when I announced that I'd figured out her secret, that she's a Timelord.)
Come to think of it, I also never heard aunt Vaso's whole name -- Vasiliki -- until I started working on the family tree, but apparently that is a pretty standard shortening. But I don't think either relative's short name was chosen to be easier for Anglophones (though Vaso lives in England, so maybe she would have done so if she weren't already called by an easy short version of her name).
The idea of a Greek name and an even Greeker name delights me.
I know that my parents were planning to name me Mikaelakis or something similar (see previous remark about spelling) but changed their minds after they heard my father's mother try to pronounce it, deciding it was safer just to name me after Dad. So the name "Michelle" occurred to me, but I'd have to be really attached to that name to ask somebody very important to me to get over their own issues with that name, and I like it but I don't think I like it enough.
Oh, and thank you for the information about Greek. I don't know what anybody is saying, but phoneme combinations like "efk" and "efh" seem very much like what I hear. They're Laconian.
(no subject)
I'd no idea. Mazel tov! Welcome to the team!
Eftychia (Ευτυχια, /eff-ti-KHEE-a/
Wait, both the second and fourth letters are an upsilon, and it's pronounced /eff-ti-KHEE-a/? Huh. Are all those words that start with the "eu" prefix supposed to sound like /eff/?
I think it's phonetically lovely, especially with the χ sound, but I don't expect most Americans to be able to cope with that phoneme, and I find the pronounciation and emphasis non-obvious from the spelling. You're going to have a lot of trouble with people not understanding you on the phone.
What would your mother have named you if you had been AFAB? Is your mother still alive and well? Are you talking to her about your transition? If she's good with it, it might be worth talking to her about it. In most societies around the world, including ours, parents give names to their children as a sort of blessing, a way of expressing their hopes and aspirations for their child. If she is not hostile to your transition, you might ask her for the name she would have given you if she had known – her blessing for her daughter.
(no subject)
The eu->ef thing seems to be a Modern Greek vs Ancient Greek thing. (Either that or it's a Cypriot Greek vs Mainland Greek difference, but I think Greek Greeks do it too. I'm not 100% sure.) So Λευκωσια (Nicosia) is pronounced /Lef-ko-si-a/, and "ευχαριστω" ("thank you") comes out "efharistoh". Since the Greek I studied in middle school was Ancient, it took me ages to figure out how to spell most of the words my relatives were saying, and I'm still stumped on several, but I finally for the "ef is spelled ευ" part down.
Yeah, part of why I asked for folks' reactions to it was to gauge just how big the spelling/pronunciation problem is going to be, and how attached to the name anyhow from how I feel about hearing that problem voiced by others. (Makes it less abstract, if that makes sense.)
My mother (who died in May) did not remember what she would have named me if I'd been AFAB. I did ask. I really, really wish she'd been able to tell me.
I know that my parents were planning to name me Mikaelakis or something similar (see previous remark about spelling) but changed their minds after they heard my father's mother try to pronounce it, deciding it was safer just to name me after Dad. So the name "Michelle" occurred to me, but I'd have to be really attached to that name to ask somebody very important to me to get over their own issues with that name, and I like it but I don't think I like it enough. And because I was baptized Orthodox I had to be baptized under a Biblical or church name (which neither of my given names are), so they picked Κλημης for that (which winds up sounding approximately "Gleemus" the way Mom said it, and took me forever to figure out the spelling of so I could Google it) and it turns out to be the Greek form of "Clement", so of course I considered "Clementine", but that made me sound like an anachronism. I might use Clementine (with a French pronunciation) as an SCA name, since I found an SCA-period composer named Clementine de Bourges.
But yeah, I really wish I knew what my parents would have named me if I'd been AFAB.
(no subject)
Awwww. :(
And because I was baptized Orthodox I had to be baptized under a Biblical or church name (which neither of my given names are), so they picked Κλημης for that
Right, everyone in my sweetie's mother's family has at least two names, the one the Anglophones could cope with, and their Greek names.
At the first Christmas dinner I spent with them, I asked
Amusingly, Aunt C has a perfectly Greek – even Classical – name she was known by as her American name. She just had an even Greeker name that I first heard about in the Greek parts of her funeral service.
Anyways, so, technically, you don't have a naming problem.
You have two naming problems.
HTH. :) :) :)
(no subject)
(It does kind of liberate me a bit, because I can pick whatever difficult name appeals to me, but tell people, "you can call me [easyname]". It does mean I have to like both though, so yeah, two problems.)
I am reminded of my cousin Lia, whom I only ever heard called Lia until I went to Cyprus and misspelled her name "Lea" and was corrected with the explanation, "It's short for Evangelia." It wasn't a surprise to anyone else though, as when I saw her house there was a sign on the fence with her full name on it, advertising that she's an architect. (This is my cousin the Timelord. I visited three of the four houses she designed (she usually does parks), and each one was bigger on the inside, two of them quite dramatically so. I figured out some of the tricks she'd used -- leading to a "You spotted that?! Only other architects ever catch that!" moment -- but I couldn't account for most of it. She was amused when I announced that I'd figured out her secret, that she's a Timelord.)
Come to think of it, I also never heard aunt Vaso's whole name -- Vasiliki -- until I started working on the family tree, but apparently that is a pretty standard shortening. But I don't think either relative's short name was chosen to be easier for Anglophones (though Vaso lives in England, so maybe she would have done so if she weren't already called by an easy short version of her name).
The idea of a Greek name and an even Greeker name delights me.
(no subject)
Μιχαέλα?
(no subject)
Part of the problem is that I know a lot of people, so most of the easy names are taken.
(no subject)