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12:27pm May 23, 2014
Anonymous asked: Hi, may I ask what is the name you have right now and for what name do you want to change it? I hope this question does not annoy you, if you dont want to tell me your name I understand completely (and I'm sorry for the mistakes or rudeness I wrote, english is not my native language) Lots of love <3

The name most people know me by is Amanda Melissa Baggs.  I did change it for complicated reasons (some involving personal safety, some involving identity and gender and culture and lots of other things) to something else (which I won’t print here), but I realized that’s a mistake, for many reasons.  But because I have some seriously bad PTSD-type associations with my original name, among other reasons, I’ve often gone by my middle name Mel, and so I’m changing it to Amelia Evelyn Voicy Baggs.  But I’m going to be going by Mel Baggs for all practical purposes.

Amelia is because it’s like a combination of Amanda and Melissa, without being either one of them, and because it still can be shortened to Mel.  This was a compromise.  I really wanted to just be Mel.  But a friend convinced me that given how much prejudice I deal with already, a gender-neutral name is not something I should put myself through at the moment, even if most people would not find a problem with it.  So Amelia/Mel for short is the compromise we came to, and I’m fine with that.

Evelyn is my most intimate friend’s middle name.  It’s not a name that I’d have chosen for any other reason, but sharing a middle name with her means a lot to me because we are extremely close.  (I don’t mean intimate in a romantic or sexual way, I just don’t know how to describe the level of closeness in our relationship because it’s far more than an ordinary friendship.  And sharing a middle name honors that intimacy.)

Voicy is the name of several relatives in my family, including my dad’s favorite aunt.  It stands for the deepest of my roots in family and place and time and lots of other things.

And Baggs is the last name I was born with, and I feel like I shouldn’t run away from it anymore.  It also connects me to my roots.

I won’t be changing my name again after this, no matter what happens.  It’s Mel Baggs (Amelia Evelyn Voicy Baggs) for life.  And I’m not hiding it, because I found that hiding a name was such a complicated and difficult affair that I never want to do it again.  

My only slight regret is Amelia instead of just plain Mel.  But as my friend said, just plain Mel is still who I really am – Amelia is a formality that protects me from prejudice in some contexts.  And sometimes you just have to pick your battles.  I already deal with discrimination for looking gender ambiguous, and she’s afraid that something seemingly small like a gender-neutral name on top of that, could tip the balance in a life and death situation such as healthcare.  I’ve come to trust her on matters like that, so while I have a small regret, it’s not such a big regret that I’m going to hate my name or anything.