I saw it online in the profile of a human rights activist and liked the sound of it. I even used it as an alt username and character names years before coming out, so when the time came to choose a new name for myself, I knew it was the only name I could accept, and I loved it from the moment I started using it :)

I struggled for months or even years with this. Then I named a pen and paper character after June from avatar and got so used to be called June when playing, that I started to like it.

My first name (Sophie) was picked by strenuously looking through the top 1,000 girl names in the US, and writing down anything that felt “right”. I ended up with a short list (including Amber, Luna, Aurora, Bri, and a few others I can’t remember), and I looked up the meaning and histories of each. Sophie is the French form of the Greek Sophia, which means knowledge and wisdom. Given that I’m highly autistic and have a whole damn encyclopedia of facts in my head, I felt it fit the best (and it’s super cute). I was going to go with Sophia and just have Sophie as a nickname, but I liked Sophie so much that I just had to have it as my legal name. I also picked my middle and last names, though. My middle name (which I won’t say as to not doxx myself) is related to my favorite wildflower, in a language of the country I wish I could immigrate to. I spent a very long time on it. My last name is a common US last name that is also from the region of that country, and I picked it mostly so I didn’t have an immediately searchable name (harder to doxx/stalk me). The reason I picked a new last name was because…well, let’s just say I had a horrible childhood, and want nothing to do with my family. I didn’t want my name to feel like it was “owned” by them. Which is also why I didn’t ask them what they would have named me if they knew I was a girl, as others here have done.

Took the equivalent popular name from the year of my birth. As in second most popular boy name to second most popular girl name.

It felt correct immediately, but YMMV

I used to have to come up with a lot of names when I played DnD a while back. I’m usually good at taking in my surroundings or my existing knowledge and mash it up into something interesting.

ok so the chmod command from Linux, plus Siemens (yes, the tech/rail company) and a random suffix with vowels: Chiemyu

not my best thinking, but gets the point across and would be good for some silly character 😅

I was thinking about Satan back then and noticed that Lucifer can be shortened to Lucy and thought that this name is actually really nice.

TLDR the reason is satanism

Stole it from my second grade teacher.

I still use my name my mom gave me at birth. Its a masc name and I’m transfem. Egg cracked like 4 years ago and I haven’t had any names I feel like trying. I do sometimes use alternative feminine spellings that don’t change the pronunciation (which I first used in a pokemon game like a decade before egg cracking).

Thought about it for years, my girlfriend asks the lemmy gremlins… They recommended my Name, i loved it. (no i dont usw meow as my name…)

It was supposed to be my birth name, actually. The entire time my mom was pregnant, I absolutely refused to take my hands off my genitals for ultrasounds or I just kept turning, so they had no fucking clue what I was gonna be. They assumed a girl based off what the doc told them, and my dead name was kinda a last minute fill-in.

They never hid this fact, happily told me about other name choices when I asked, but Rose was always at least my dad’s favorite and my mom’s top “acceptable” choice. When my egg finally cracked, I tried other names but Rose just… Felt like a birthright. Like for 30+ long years there was the real me just begging for the mask to say my name. Nothing else felt like me.

One day while smoking with a friend someone placed a rock in my hand and It struck me like a vision.

I’d tried out a few names at that point and none of them felt like me, then the name I chose just popped into my head and i just kinda knew immediately in that moment. Told my friends later that day and 7 years later it feels weird to think my name was ever anything else.

This scene

Got drunk with friends and wrote down all the names that might work, and tried then one by one. Good thing the first one stuck, cause the next one was womannator 3000

I chose Flora because I love plants :)

I made a spreadsheet, of a bunch of random nouns I thought had name potential, and then asked my partner and friends their opinions and documented the results