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It’s time for another edition of SE(N)O, an essay series on A+ for personal stories we wish we could tell on the accessible-to-our-employers-and-everyone-we’ve-ever-known mainsite, but can’t for personal and professional reasons.
For most of the first 25 years of my 28 years on earth, everybody treated me like a man. Well, like a gay man, because a lot of people thought I was gay, but still — like a man. It’s hard to shake that. When I write about my life before I came out, I’m afraid people will read that writing and imagine me as a guy, like how I imagine someone doing the things they’re describing when I’m reading about their past. So I want to talk to you about my name, but doing so summons a lot of fear — that you’ll see me as less of a woman when I do.
Names have a lot of magic in them. In folklore, the idea of knowing someone or something’s true name is a powerful one, and someone sharing it with you is them at their most vulnerable. Many Catholic parents, mine included, name their children after saints of people from the Bible. Our obsession with names doesn’t end there: next, a Catholic will go through the sacrament of Confirmation, becoming a full member of the church, at which point we chose another saint we want to emulate and we take their name. Names are bigger than the letters that make them up. They fit an entire personality inside them, an entire history, they fit an entire soul.
The journey to finding and deciding on my real name, Melinda Valdivia Rude, took about four years.
The first name I wanted for myself was Madeline. It had long been my favorite “girl name” so it was an obvious first choice. Unfortunately, it’s also one of my oldest friend’s middle name. I’d hoped she’d remain my friend after I came out (and she did), and I didn’t want to add another layer of weirdness to an already-sure-to-be-weird occasion by adding the possibility that she’d wonder if I’d named myself after her. So, after over a year of going back and forth, I moved on.
Next, I thought about naming myself after one of my favorite writers, like Shirley, Dorothy, Flannery or Sandra. I liked some of those names more than others (I don’t think I look like much of a Shirley), but even the ones I liked the most never felt comfortable. All of them felt like I was just trying to imitate a woman, like I was trying to copy a woman I looked up to and admired instead of being my own woman. I know that’s a deeply flawed logic, but when you’re a trans woman who doesn’t know any other trans women in real life and grew up being taught by the media and news that trans women are just men pretending to be women, you often get stuck on some really shaky logical ground.
So, onwards: I came to really like the idea of coming out being a way to reconnect with my Mexican heritage, and after years of complaining to my parents for not giving me a more “Mexican” name, I had a chance to change that. I considered Ximena and Guadalupe and a few others. I really liked this idea and thought it could actually work until it hit me that changing my first name also meant changing my initials and I didn’t want to lose that. As much as I couldn’t stand people using my first name, I strangely loved my initials.
My whole life I’d been using my initials way more than any kid should… which I now realize may have been ‘cause I wanted to avoid using my birth name. The initials “MCR” are so much more gender neutral than, you know… Matthew.
Whew.
So, there it is, and now I’m gonna take a break for a minute.
I already sat with the last word of that paragraph blank for about ten minutes before I finally wrote in the name. Just looking at it right now, it looks so ugly. I know it’s just a name, that it’s not really my name, that it has no power over me. But also, honestly? It kinda does.
I have to use it on legal forms, which makes me wince. When people slip up and call me by my old name, it hits my ears like a thud, like a hammer smashing against the side of my head. It literally sounds louder, like it’s being yelled directly into my ear. Sometimes I get so stuck on hearing the name used in reference to me that I don’t even hear the next few sentences. It hurts, it can ruin my whole day.
But I’m here to explore things that might be painful, power through them, and get to the other side, so let’s get back into it.
The name I eventually settled on was Matilde (because I liked the way it’s spelled), and by “settled on” I do mean settled. I wasn’t happy with the name, and to be honest, the main reason I went with it was because it would be an easier transition for my friends. Let me say that again. I was trying to minimize my transition to make it easier on other people. Just a quick message for all the trans people reading this, you don’t have to do this. It’s okay to do this thing for yourself. You don’t have to sacrifice your own happiness to make your transition easier for other people. But that’s what I did.
I started going by Matilde whenever I was with all my friends. It was definitely a thousand times better than them calling me by my birth name, but it wasn’t actually good. It was like every time someone wanted to talk to me or about me in the past, they would punch me with a pair of brass knuckles and now they were just flicking me really hard on the arm.
Eventually, I got tired of the constant pain in the arm, and so I decided to change my name —again. This made me nervous. I’d already committed to one name, and I was afraid that all my friends would think that I didn’t know what I was doing. They wouldn’t be totally wrong to think that, I mean, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was stumbling in the dark, trying to find a name that fit.
What ultimately brought me to decide on my present name was my family. I’ve got a really strong connection to my family, especially my mother’s side. I’m lucky that they’ve always been extremely supportive of me, including my coming out as trans — I’m actually closer with my mom now than I was before coming out and I’d already started using my mother’s maiden name, Valdivia, as a part of my nom de plume. So, one day I just texted her, “Before I was born, and before the doctor told you I was going to be a boy, did you pick out a girl name for me?”
“I always liked the name Melinda.”
Now there was a name! Melinda. I could keep my first initial but wouldn’t be reminded of my old name at all. I could write and say this name aloud and it really felt natural. My mom chose it, this was the name she’d thought of when she thought about me growing inside of her belly. I fit inside this name.
The only thing left was making sure people would say my name right. Now that I’m in charge of my own name, I’m sure as hell not going to let people mangle it. “May-LEEN-duh,” not “Muh-lihn-duh.” Back when I was a 16-year-old high school student at the Idaho Hispanic Youth Symposium, I met this girl named Melisa, pronounced “May-Lees-uh,” not “Meh-lihs-uh.” Whenever someone tried to pronounce it the standard (White) American way, she would stop them mid sentence and correct them. She was the first person I ever saw take control of their name like that, and it stuck with me. I wanted to be able to confidently correct others when they got my name wrong. Now I can.
I also started trying out nicknames. I wanted to walk around in my name, wear it in, make it comfortable. I went for the obvious choice, Mel. If it worked for Scary Spice, why not me? But there was something a little off. Once again, it was my Mom who came to my rescue. We were emailing back and forth when she was trying to write “Mel,” but somehow (I’m still not sure how she missed the key this bad) she ended up writing “Mey.” From where I was sitting, it looked like my mom had just come up with a cute nickname for me, and one that reinforced the way I wanted to pronounce it. My name was starting to get a history, a personality. It was starting to feel really, really comfortable. I really felt like I was hitting my stride with this whole name thing.
Now that I know my true name I feel like I really have power over myself. That’s a big feeling, finally having autonomy. Melinda Valdivia Rude. This is who I was meant to be. This fits. Hearing it isn’t like a punch in the arm or a flick to the wrist, it’s like linking arms with the whole rest of the world and confidently walking into the future.
