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.

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 😅

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...)

HunterXHunter, Alluka was my favorite character. I'm a huge weeb if that wasn't obvious.

Came across a really cool musician who's name was an unusual feminization of my deadname and I liked it.

I chose Flora because I love plants :)

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).

My name happens to be gender neutral. I kept it. Now I am invincibly undeadnameable. Like a Lich who doesn't need a soul cage.

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.

Hentai.

Not trans but I did change my last name to my mother's maiden name. Don't like my mother much either but I repeat my clan and grandfather far more than the sub-human filth that is the kin of the tainted one.

Do you ever wish to rend thine own flesh for having corrupted blood within or is that a me problem? Regardless I wish to annihilated my paternal DNA regardless of all other factors.

My mom had told me from a young age, long before either of us knew, what I would've been named if I'd been a girl. She'd had names picked out for boys and girls but didn't have a born girl. I call it my "chosen given name"

My wife and I are one and done, very happy. We both really liked our potential daughter's name and decided I should use it :)

Statistics. My assigned name was the 3rd most popular for my agab when I was born, so I tried on the 3rd most popular name for my actual gender, and I was like, yup, that's the one. Perfect fit.

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

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.

i got my forename from a not super interesting book i forgot the title of a while ago. i decided on my surname with my family (long story), ultimately took it from a modern-era historical figure known for her work with data processing. i also technically have a middle name suggested by my mother that i just put on my legal name/sex change paperwork because why not!! :)

It's the name of the wife of a twitch streamer I follow. It's also the name of a notorious feminist who fought for women suffrages in the 50s in my region. And it's also the name of the most beautiful woman in greek mythology 🥰

it was a joke and it stuck (it is the same as a muppet, but i am kind of a muppet so it worked)

Both my sisters' names end with -ina. So I changed my name to something that also ends with -ina for consistency.

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

Born with a unisex name, so my parents 🤷

It was the name of a saint. I'm not religious in that way but I heard the how passionate they were about what they liked. So much, in fact, that it led to their demise. Of course, I don't want that to happen to me, but I just thought it was nice.

Bonus: I got my middle name from a character in The Magnus Archives. Love that podcast.

So when I told my mum about me I wanted it to be a little of an ice-breaker for her to brainstorm a new one with me. I had some 'soft' requirements - appropriate for my age, something I could shorten and greek-ish (deadname and my sister's names both are, not like we have any familial link or anything). I'm the eldest of 2 and for years we have known her name had she been a boy but for some reason we both thought my other name was what she got called. Turns out it wasnt true and my mum said "oh no you were going to be called x". And when I heard it I realised it fulfilled all my requirements, kinda suited me and it just felt nice, like it was mine to reclaim.

(Btw, username unrelated lol)

I had a made up name that I used online (don’t feel any particular attachment to it now), and 20 years ago the advice was to use a name in the top 10 or 20 for your birth cohort to blend in more easily, so that’s what I did. I let my parents pick my middle name, as an olive branch over transitioning; it didn’t get them to use the right name or pronouns, but I still like the name or I wouldn’t have used it.

Stole it from Lena Raine :3

I tried a few different names; most of them were derived from my original name. I ultimately decided on one that was pretty similar to my dead name.
I also realized a few months after picking my new name that it's an anagram for my mom's name. Except it has a D...

Jolyne, its Similar to my deadname and a JoJo reference

Read about history, and then steal the name of the most badass woman you find.

Just picked a normal-ish name off a list that shares its initial with my deadname (well, more like zombiename at this point), so my work email can't change and i can just go by "F. Lastname" instead of "Firstname Lastname" when i want to keep my gender ambiguous.

ETA: you can also just try out a name with friends or on socials for a bit before committing to it, and you can always change it later.