What's in a name?

After most of a year hemming and hawing, and perhaps a week of hardcore research and evaluation, I've come to a decision on finalizing my name so that I can get legal documentation started. I'm going with Kaylee Samantha Scheans.

When my wife and I originally got married, there was never really much of a question as to whether or not she would take my last name. Her family is a huge part of our lives, and is full of people that I've loved from the first moment we met. There's a strength in them, as a mutually supportive unit, that kind of earns and demands honor. I was told early on that I'd unequivocally earned adoption in lending a hand digging out some of the many hoarded treasures that Grandma had built up over the years. Love and acceptance are easy currency within the group, given freely without reservation. Help is what you do when you can think of a way; waiting to be asked is a waste of time. As special and genuine as that felt, I soon learned that this was simply the way of the clan - they all have a habit of collecting and claiming strays; there's nearly always at least one new face at family gatherings, and the people they find are always unique and special enough that you know that it's an immense compliment to be counted among their number. They place as much value on found family as I do, and I utterly respect that.

My own attachment to familial lines is weakened by distance in all it's forms, and is poisoned by the outright homicidal rejection that I hold for my deadname self. I strongly considered changing the last name to match my wife's when we got hitched, but ultimately let excuses of it being too fadish and uncomfortable to bring up with my family win out. So no one changed names, then. At the least, when my daughter was born a few years later, we thought long and hard about the implications of that and decided to saddle her with a total of four names so that both lasts could be incorporated in hers so as to avoid there ever being any question of her being our kid during pickups and the like. It's looking like she wants to simplify that down to three when I get my name officially changed, so that we can all just have the same last name, and Washington only charges a dollar more for family to alter names all at once, likely due to domestic violence fallout - we're inclined to let her make that decision and support it.

Samantha/Sam has never really gotten around to feeling like ME; even nearly a year in I have to very manually remind myself to respond. The reasons I chose it are still valid, mostly, but I hate that it is very consciously a hedge on the thought of presenting as male or female on paper; a way to claw back some of the privilege I'm giving up, just in case I need it for defense. Now that just feels like a brazen lie to myself, a beacon to remind me that I'm not really who I'm pretending to be. By moving it to a middle name, I can still honor the reasons it was initially attractive, and I think it will be a little special to have it as a nickname from those who have helped me survive this last year.

As to why Kaylee is a fit, it's hard to quantify in a way that feels complete. I have a huge feeling of being almost pretentious, like I'm not "good enough" to make the claim to the name, but it does feel correct. The few times it's been used so far have been warm and inviting, and make me feel very understood.

...[pause for over a damn month - started this thought 2/27/23]...

Since then, I've had the rather new experience of being around a fair number of people who have known me as "Kaylee" as long or longer than they've known me as either "Sam" or deadname. I've also had the real privlege of starting a new relationship with a incredible woman during that time, R. The way she and her wife have invited me into their lives has been nothing short of magical, and it's really helped me to adapt to feeling like the name belongs to me to have it used so often and casually. When it catches me by surprise, which is still kind of does at times, it's a different tone - "Kaylee" produces a feeling almost of wonderment; it's a visceral reminder than things can change and get better, even when that thought has otherwise slid out of focus. While the direct inspiration is Firefly's mechanic (https://firefly.fandom.com/wiki/Kaywinnet_Lee_Frye), and the character does encompass many of the attributes I associate with the idea of it, there's a feeling of an independant cloud of inferences that ride the designation seperate from Joss Whedon's efforts. Even just the phonetics of it speak to a bright eagerness and boundless energy and enthusiasm.

She's the girl next door, the one who's self-reliant and capable, almost to a fault. Guileless and somehow untarnished despite a playfully passionate and dirty mind. Inventive and resourceful, clever and fiercely protective, welcoming and just a little charmingly naive. The official definitions and origins are nebulous; the name has seen fairly steady increases in popularity over the last century, peaking roughly simultaneously with the show's broadcast.

The first meaning I came across was "Who is like God?" as an American origin, and it's really the one I've had the most engagement with. Not only does it stroke a little geekery in honoring a deific level of techno wizardry, but in a weird way, it also hones in on a very specific thought process. I'm agnostic, almost entirely an atheist, functionally, except for a little residual doubt about how things actually work behind the curtain. I can't handle the the versions of religion that treat God as a single, beneficent, omnipotent, and omniscient being; my own experiences and observations call that out as a cruel, callous lie. Somehow, the deceptive over-simplification of an all-important monolithic species of "greater good" driving a singular, universal plan, is just flatly offensive to me - such a thing cannot have any resemblance to the world we find ourselves in.

Older, more colorful models that allow for multiple personalities and forces, that follow motivations and actions more complex than blind obedience, are yet attractive, though. In such tales, power is often dependent on knowledge and capability, ingenuity and daring. This I can work with; omniscience and omnipotence are unattainable interlinked absolutes, but effort to learn can bring you ever closer to perfection. To a certain extent, I feel like that increase in power and understanding is in fact becoming more godlike, which rings right back to the name; not a statement that I am or want to be a literal god, but that I strive to become stronger, more capable, and more knowledgeable wherever and in whatever form I can.

Other definitions fit less well; I have no affinity for "Laurel" or "Crown", and "Chaste" or "Pure" is at best a misapprehension. "Beloved" I'm growing a bit of fondness for, given recent developments, but is not yet a trait that I feel at home claiming.

At the utmost, though, I actually feel like Kaylee is me. My mind doesn't buck every time I think of it, trying to shake off an ill-fitting, patently false alias. In a way, it feels like a completed progression in shedding my deadname; R's wife very briefly heavily considered dating someone by the same name during this adoption and it's felt like the very last step in establishing that as someone solidly other than me. Every time I consciously think or hear "Kaylee", it's almost like being stroked by all of these concepts that I associate with the name, a nearly physical experience of being bombarded with what I value and hope to be. It's a good thing.