namechangesurvey

[namechangesurvey]

It's been a hot second and I apologise for abandoning this blog, but I am happy to report that I've gotten my results and picked up my graduation documents! I've sent out the finished thesis to those who gave me their email addresses, so check your inboxes (and/or spam folders) for that.

(One address given in the survey caused my email to bounce, so I was not able to send out the thesis to that person unfortunately.)

Please note that to ensure participants' anonymity, full datasets are not included in the thesis and over the course of the paper, I use names as examples only when they appear more than once. All the data has also been deleted off the survey website by now.

Thank you all again for helping me with my research! I couldn't have done this without you <3

(Also if you still want to read the thesis, feel free to DM me your email address and I will send it to you!)

[namechangesurvey]

I promise I'm not dead, I've just been really really busy because my deadline is approaching and I am in emergency Get It Done mode. Anyway shoutout to the multiple participants in the questionnaire who said their name came to them in a dream; I'm putting you in my thesis <3

[namechangesurvey]

The second survey is now CLOSED! Thank you <3

I am still sorting through the data from Survey #1 (and probably will be for a while), but I'll let you know how it's going when I have the time and brainspace for it!

[namechangesurvey]

Ahhh, gotcha!

A deadname, and another one that's not quite dead just yet but living on a farm upstate, so to speak haha

I ran into a fun problem on the first page of your survey where I have changed my legal first name but not to my current chosen name and there wasn't exactly an option for that lol

While I'm here, it's very funny to me that people will see my legal name and apologise for knowing my deadname because it's... Not my deadname, it's just an old name I've moved on from

Yeah, I unfortunately can't plan for every possibility... however, the "Have you legally changed your name?" question doesn't lead to a different page, it just potentially adds another question (depending on your answer) to the page you're led to if you choose "Yes" on having changed your name! :)

The important thing is whether or not there has been a change - and your chosen name is the one that matters for my analysis, even if your legal name is something else.

(And yes, I also find the different ways people feel about their old names very interesting - and it's even in the terminology itself. 'Deadname' has a somewhat negative connotation, after all, so it's maybe not the word that someone who feels positively/neutral about their birth name would want to use. Like with everything queer, there's a great spectrum of experiences there!)

[namechangesurvey]

I ran into a fun problem on the first page of your survey where I have changed my legal first name but not to my current chosen name and there wasn't exactly an option for that lol

While I'm here, it's very funny to me that people will see my legal name and apologise for knowing my deadname because it's... Not my deadname, it's just an old name I've moved on from

Yeah, I unfortunately can't plan for every possibility... however, the "Have you legally changed your name?" question doesn't lead to a different page, it just potentially adds another question (depending on your answer) to the page you're led to if you choose "Yes" on having changed your name! :)

The important thing is whether or not there has been a change - and your chosen name is the one that matters for my analysis, even if your legal name is something else.

(And yes, I also find the different ways people feel about their old names very interesting - and it's even in the terminology itself. 'Deadname' has a somewhat negative connotation, after all, so it's maybe not the word that someone who feels positively/neutral about their birth name would want to use. Like with everything queer, there's a great spectrum of experiences there!)

[namechangesurvey]

For the purpose of this poll "nonbinary" is used as an umbrella term to include any gender identity other than binary man and woman. If you consider yourself to be outside the gender binary at all, this poll is for you!

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[namechangesurvey]

I haven't had time to properly analyse the data from the old survey, but I went through a small portion of it in order to build the new questionnaire (specifically to give you good options to choose from with certain questions). And I'd just like to take this moment to say that you are all lovely, and that your experiences with your names - and how they relate to your gender identities - are so varied and fascinating and funny and heartwarming!

Thank you for helping me with this research! It matters a lot to me <3

[namechangesurvey]

List of Changes to the Names Changes Survey

Fewer mandatory questions.

Most questions are now either single or multiple choice in order to make it possible to analyse the data easily no matter how many participants I get. You can usually still add your own input with the "Other" option though!

Added many fun new gender options to choose from that I saw a bunch in the data from the first survey (including "genderqueer" because I am a clown and did not include that one previously). Same with pronouns!

I am no longer asking for the names themselves or pronunciations of them (see the above point about being able to analyse data). Instead you will be asked whether certain criteria apply to your name(s).

This was already the case in the first survey but depending on your answers, you will see different questions and pages of the survey. These are more complicated now, but only on my end (again: data analysis reasons). For you, they should look just like before - maybe a bit simpler, actually.

Things that have NOT changed:

The rating scale question still looks really bad on mobile. I didn't design the survey page and question types and have no way of fixing this. My apologies. I've added a note to the "Welcome" page about it to let people know in advance.

You still get open text fields to add additional info at the end of some of the pages and at the very end of the survey. Depending on the number of participants, I may not be able to go through those in detail - so if you want to add your email to the mailing list or have really urgent things to tell me, it's better to contact me directly instead!

[namechangesurvey]

Would YOU like to contribute (some more) to my thesis project?

Hi, you might remember me from that other survey I did last week. The one I had to pause because I got 1400 replies in three days (sorry about that, I got slightly overwhelmed). Well, if you'd like to help me gather further data, I've made a shiny new survey that will STAY ACTIVE until 10th January!

This is part of my university work in the linguistic field of onomastics, the study of proper names. The survey takes about 10-15 minutes to do and participation is anonymous; data will not be shared with third parties.

I'm looking for participants, especially ones who

are trans*/genderqueer (binary transgender, nonbinary, genderfluid, agender, or anything in between!) and/or

have changed their first name (legal proceedings not mandatory, you just need to be using one that's different from your birth name in some way)

Please note that you are welcome to participate if these criteria do not apply to you! Also you don't need to be a native English speaker to participate, and you can complete this new survey if you've done the previous one already! (Basically, I'll be comparing the answers of this one and the old survey to see if there are any changes/noticeable trends.)

The survey is now CLOSED!

It would be lovely if folks would reblog this post and pass on the link to people they know who might be interested in participating as well!

(If you encounter any technical problems or other issues, please let me know so I can go see what's up! And get in touch if you have any questions!)

[namechangesurvey]

An Update!

Thank you for your patience while I sorted some things out. Here's the news:

The original survey that ran from 13th - 17th December will NOT reopen unfortunately. I'll be analysing the data collected so far (from just over 1400 completed surveys) for my thesis, but that's already a pretty tall task and it simply wouldn't be doable if the numbers were even higher.

However! I will be doing a SECOND SURVEY that is more streamlined and suitable for large numbers of participants!

You will no longer be asked to share your first names directly (or record yourself saying them out loud). The survey will instead consist mostly of single or multiple choice questions related to your name(s) and - if you've changed your name - the reasons they were chosen and your experiences with the change. You can participate in the second survey no matter whether you took the first one or not (it will basically serve as a comparison to the first one to see if certain trends in answers are the same)!

I'm currently working on this new version and will share it with you as soon as I'm done with it (along with a more detailed breakdown of what's different). And this time it won't close after a couple of days, promise! The plan is for it to stay open until early to mid January.

Stay tuned! :D

(Also my supervisor asked for a link to this blog to see what all the fuss is about over here on Tumblr, so EVERYBODY BEHAVE PLEASE lol)

[namechangesurvey]

Heya! Just to reiterate: The survey is PAUSED, so clicking the link will lead you to an error page at the moment. This is intentional and nothing to worry about.

I'll be talking with my supervisor about how to proceed (i.e., whether to reopen the survey or """limit""" myself to the data I got so far) and will update you lovely folks as soon as that's been decided.

Over 1400 people completed the survey in the few days since I shared it - and while I was hoping for it to get some attention on here, I never expected this enthusiastic of a response (which, in hindsight, was probably very silly of me lol). So thank you all for being so cool and willing to offer your experiences to this kind of research!

Take care! <3

[namechangesurvey]

I have gone by a nickname derived from my legal name all my life. Does that count as "different from the name given to me at birth"? I.e. There hasn't been any change in what I'm called, nor my legal name, but those two have always been different.

It kind of depends on what exactly you mean by "all [your] life" - i.e., how early in life the change occurred and whether there was a time at any point where you went by the name given to you at birth. If you went by your birth name at some point and then started going by this nickname later, it counts!

(Also, as a sidenote: at one point in the survey, I use "nickname" as distinct from "chosen name" because nicknames are usually given by other people, but if you chose the nickname for yourself, that would obviously make it a chosen name instead)

[namechangesurvey]

Just as an inclusive terminology note I was initially confused by your use of genderqueer as an umbrella term including all transgender people (i.e., transgender men and transgender women as well). It could imply on initial viewing that you are only looking for people with a gender outside of a male/female binary. Or that you treat trans men/women in this study as non-binary (i.e., NOT men/women). Perhaps it depends on what country/style guide you use as for me (Scotland/APA style guide used mainly) 'transgender including non-binary' is used as the umbrella term, and genderqueer as a specific identity outside the binary as per the APA "Genderqueer is a term that some people use who identify their gender as falling outside the binary constructs of “male” and “female.”"

(on ask just sent re: gender) this is about the post promoting the survey, I can now see in the actual survey you use genderqueer/transgender and good gender selection options

Yeah, that was a mistake on my part. The Tumblr post has gone far enough down the reblog chain that most people probably won't see the original anymore, but I've gone and edited it to clarify anyway. Sorry about the confusion!

Finding a good way to address this target demographic is difficult because the gist of it is "anyone who is doing something funky with their gender", but obviously I can't phrase it that way in a university research project. (And the literature I've read also goes back and forth on the umbrella terms they use, which is frustrating.)

[namechangesurvey]

My supervisor was already baffled by the 200+ this morning what in the fresh hell am I going to tell them lol

[namechangesurvey]

On that note, btw: if you happen to know how to do phonetic transcription using the IPA, you can of course do that instead of doing the voice recording! I study linguistics; I know how to read that haha.

(And like I mentioned earlier, the recording isn't mandatory. No worries if you can't or don't want to!)

[namechangesurvey]

i can't correctly pronounce my name (speech impediment), could i instead put a link to a site with an audio clip of it in the further information box?

Sure, that's perfectly fine!

[namechangesurvey]

I have a question about the survey! I use my given middle name in place of my given first name. Does that fall under the umbrella of changing my first name?

Yup, it does! If you had a first name, and you now use a different name instead of that first name - it counts :D