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hi everyone long time no see it's Vesper sorry for disappearing on you yet again my new job has literally been sucking the life and soul out of me but I'm finally here with a new video that I promised a million years ago this video and especially the name change itself has been a long time in coming because I feel like I've been thinking about changing my name since 2013 and now that everything's done I am officially Vesper now it ironically feels like there isn't all that much to say so yeah in the interest of transparency I want to say straight up that this video is mostly me reflecting upon the process and my thoughts in regards to name change mostly for those who may be interested in one person's experience with changing their name please keep in mind that my experience is not likely to be your experience because Legislature jurisdiction and bureaucracy so yeah please keep that in mind your mileage may vary for those of you who are just now tuning in to this particular video my name is Vesper I'm a non-binary person an American who has been living abroad in Japan for many years until recently coming back to America this past end of March April so I will specifically be talking about name change from the point of view of an American more specifically someone whose home state is Nevada but who is now residing in the state of Washington generally speaking and I feel like this is true regardless of where you live the process of changing one's name is really a process of jumping through lots of legal hoops the number of Hoops the types of Hoops the lengths at which you're expected to jump differ depending on where you live and what hurdles are thrown in your way and for me the number of Hoops was probably the biggest hurdle or biggest intimidation factor there and I feel really fortunate to be able to say that in 2013 I began brainstorming names that I could ask people to refer to me as instead of my given name I made the video queers cats 17 talking about you know my whole process brainstorming gender-neutral names and I talked about in that video how difficult it is to really come with a name that is truly gender-neutral and I'll be honest at that time in 2013 I wasn't even really thinking about legally changing my name I just wanted a different name for people to refer to me as instead of my given name I hadn't even really seriously thought about the legal process of changing my name because it was intimidating and I felt like that really wasn't an option for me because I was living in Japan so I just wasn't even going there yet plus I've long since had a really complicated relationship to my given name because I kind of liked it as a name in and of itself I just didn't want it to be for me and so yeah it took me a while to navigate those thoughts and feelings and get to eventually wanting to legally change my name few weeks after posting that video brainstorming what name I wanted to go with in which vesper wasn't even on my radar when I made that particular video it was just a few weeks later that I did come up with the name Vesper and fell in love with it immediately and just yeah it clicked things clicked and I wanted that to be my name and now it is some people go through a number of names until they find the one that really works for them that they really feel comfortable with and some people hold off on legally changing their name for that reason because they're unsure whether they really really will want to be called that particular name for forever or any number of reasons and I totally get that that wasn't my personal experience I came across Vesper it was the first name that I took on and I'm really fortunate to I found that name that said even though it immediately felt comfortable for me and I immediately began to use it on careers cat and online it wasn't until a year or so later that I began to use it offline in career spaces and it was several years later in 2017 that I finally decided to go full-time Vesper then transition between being known as Vesper and my previous given name was really awkward to say the least because at various points in time half of the people who knew me offline knew me as Vesper and then the other half of people who especially related to work and you know medical stuff knew me as a different name and so when people from these two different worlds two different sides of my life happened to run into each other and they knew me by different names it was really really awkward for them and for me but you see I would have legally changed my name years ago probably all the way back in 2014 because like I said Vesper immediately felt comfortable for me and I wanted everyone to call me that it just was a process to get to the point of getting everyone to call me that but if I could have I would have legally changed my name four years five years ago I just couldn't because being in Japan complicated things so yeah I gave up on the legal side but I did move forward socially with my name chain I moved to another city I changed jobs and I started using Vesper in the workplace and outside of the workplace the only places where my given name my legal name was still used was in terms of legal capacity in a medical office or on my ID I had socially changed my name it was just the legal side that I had to contend with and when it became clear that I was gonna move back to America of course I started looking into legally changing my name again only to find that Nevada had changed its laws in the whatever period of time that I had stopped looking and those changes in the law couldn't have come at a better time for me personally because I left Japan at the end of March came back to the States at the end of March and as of April 2009 tene Nevada became among the small number of states to allow X as a gender marker on driver's licenses not only that but you could legally change your name in Nevada without a doctor's note without any proof of a gender change that was something completely new in fact to change your name legally you didn't have to post your name change in a local newspaper for two weeks anymore which had been required for everyone unless it was a name change because of marriage so this is great news right I was really really happy except you know things are never that simple for me everything has to be complicated you see yes I was returning to America but I wasn't returning to my home state of Nevada instead I moved to Washington so in order to do the name change I still had to go through Nevada at first because that's where my residency was but I also had to keep in mind Washington's name change in gender marker laws because ultimately I would be changing my residency from Nevada to Washington so now I had twice the name change in gender marker laws to contend with long story short I needed to change my name in Nevada because it was easier to do in Nevada than Washington but I had to do it from afar when it came to gender marker changes I couldn't change my gender marker because changing it would not do me any good in Washington well Nevada recognized X as a gender on driver's licenses Washington does not yet recognize X and so even if I did get an extra vers license in Nevada once I converted my Nevada driver's license to a Washington driver's license that X would have to be changed to an M or an F so yay Nevada recognizing non-binary people and Boo Washington for not yet being on board with that plus to throw it out there for those of you who may be a Nevada resident you do have to physically go into a DMV to change the gender marker on your driver's license and so I would have to fly to Nevada to change my gender marker to X and then fly back to Washington only to change it back to an M R and F anyway long story short I am leaving my gender as it is for now but I forgot to mention that Nevada also allows you to change your gender marker on your birth certificate 2x and regardless of what state you reside in if you were born in the state of Nevada you have to go through Nevada to change your gender marker on your birth certificate so yes I can change my gender to X on my birth certificate and I do intend to change my gender marker to X on my birth certificate at some point it's just not the biggest of priorities for me right now because changing my gender marker on my birth certificate wouldn't affect my daily life in the same way that a driver's license would and I don't have money to change my birth certificate at this point in time but that is an option for me that I will be pursuing in the future for now I'm most focused on name change until Washington gets on board with the gender marker thing fortunate for me another thing that has changed recently in Nevada is that there now is an online tool to help you file online your petition of name change and so I was able to file from afar in Washington for the name change through this online tool which submitted it the forms as an e file which I then had to also physically mail to a court in Nevada but the process was so much easier because it was a wizard that took me through the steps of filling out the paperwork I feel so incredibly fortunate that Nevada has made these massive steps since I first looked into changing my name back in 2014 anyway to give you a basic timeline or sense of how long it took me to legally change my name I submitted the e file for the petition for name change on March 27 2009 teen I got a copy of the petition for name change signed by a judge approved on April 18th 2019 so it took less than a month but after that I had to send away for certified copies of the petition of name change that I could then take to other agencies to change my name that took additional money and another week so yeah it took about a month to change my name and up until that point the entire process cost nearly three hundred dollars once I got those certified copies of the petition of name change I then had to take them one by one to other government agencies to the DMV to my banks etc and change my name with each place one by one it takes a lot of legwork a lot of time and so not only did it cost $300 just for the petition of name change it cost money for the new driver's license it doesn't cost money for the banks and everything like that it just cost a lot of time and effort how anyone is supposed to do that if they don't have access to that much money if they're working a full time job and can't make it to all these places during business hours is beyond me I was really really lucky to be able to get through that whole process before I started a full-time job to have had my name legally changed pretty much everywhere that needed to be changed so that I didn't have to transition my name with my current employer because they never knew my past name to begin with and I really really do feel fortunate to have been able to time things right and get things done and you know that kind of timeline in that kind of way I'm still not even done changing my name everywhere I haven't changed my name on my birth certificate I haven't bothered with my passport at this point there are still other little places like PayPal I'm still working on and etc that I haven't done yet because it is such a long process that I'm gonna be doing it for a while on an as-needed basis just because you know my name is out there in various different places and I have to go to all of those places one by one and while I have socially changed my name in Japan I did that before coming here and legally changed my name now of course if I ever go back to Nevada if I visit family there's still that social transition that needs to happen with my family that still hasn't happened yet except in my immediate family and I'm not looking forward to that whole that's a whole nother can of worms that I'm but anyway changing track I want to talk about something else that is related to name change and it's something that you may or may not have picked up on and watching this video this fire some of you may be familiar with the term dead name it's a term that has become increasingly prevalent in usage among transgender non-conforming gender variant and non-binary people in recent years I feel like dead name is used to refer to the name that was given to you by your parents upon being born but which you no longer use or go by people often distance themselves from their so-called dead name because that name was often given to them based on and assumed or coercively assigned gender at birth well you may or may not have noticed that I have not once use the term dead name in this video because I don't refer to my old name as a dead name I refer to it as my given name and I refer to my current name as you know simply my name or if pushed or needing to make a distinction between my given name and my current name I say vesper is my chosen name but I do not use given name for myself personally because I kind of low-key despise that word for myself personally and I really want to stress that this is just my personal preference I'm not trying to advocate against or for the usage of given name as opposed to dead name this is just my personal preference and I would like to talk about why I have that personal preference and why it is so important to me that my chosen words be respected I personally choose to distance myself from the term dead name and would prefer that my parents and family members never encounter that term ever although I know that I have no control over whether they encounter that term or not and it's a matter of fact that they are more likely to come across that term than not if they do get off their lazy asses and actually look into trans non-binary gender non-conforming things for themselves because the term is that prevalent but I really really really do not like that term for myself because well it's complicated but the short of it is that it reminds me of my mom's response when I came out to her as non-binary when I've approached her about wanting to and my plans to change my name and by that I mean that reminds me of my mom acting like she had lost a child that the person that she knew as that previous given name had died and I was somehow a different person a stranger that she no longer knew just because I was rejecting the name she gave me and rejecting the fact that instead of having two daughters she had two children only one of whom was a daughter and not only does it hurt very much hurt to be treated as if you died when you're literally right they're the same person that you were five 10 20 minutes ago before you told your mom this thing that is really important to you and entrusted them with that information not only does it hurt to be treated like you died when you're very much alive it hurts to be treated like you're suddenly a stranger by someone that you've known your entire life and who ought to know you better than anyone else theoretically of course yes I get that family members have their own grieving and coming to terms with what feels like a change for them even if it's always been your truth and you've been living with it your entire life it's new to them and they have to go through this grieving process blah blah but I personally take offense with being treated as if I killed someone just because I'm you know trying to live my truth more authentically than I have been up until this point of my life and I refuse to use a term that kind of reinforces or affirms the thought process that I actually died or that a name that I had died because the name isn't the living thing that name wasn't a different person that name was still referring to me and I'm very much not dead that's just me again I'm not advocating for people to stop using that name I respect and understand that that terminology works for some people but it very much does not work for me and I just haven't seen anyone talk about how you know name isn't universally a good term to refer to old names by because it can actually be really offensive and hurtful for some of us out there and so I thought I'd throw out my two cents like I do take it or leave it no offense meant to anyone who uses that word for themselves I may hate dead name to the point of gritting my teeth whenever I hear the term even not in reference to me but I very much respect other people's usage of the terms just don't use it for me please respect the fact that my old name is simply an old name or a given name and not a dead name and my current name is a chosen name or simply my name and that's all for this video I'm gonna cut myself off here I have lots of other things to talk about like I keep saying and I'm hoping that I'll be able to make more videos on a more regular schedule but we'll see like I said my current job is literally sucking the soul and life out of me you have no idea but gone buddy thank you for watching all the way through this video if you have I really appreciate every single one if you guys leave your comments in the comment section of the video if you have any personal feels on the term dead name or your personal experience and changing your name legally or socially I'd love to hear from you all I'll see you again next time hopefully relatively soon bye