Reply To: How did you choose your name?

[saoirse.t-e-c]

I chose my own name after fusing about 18 years ago. I researched baby names and their meaning for some time – I wanted something I could connect to on a deep level. We’re half Irish-American, so we looked at Irish names, amongst others. My name means “freedom”, which has different layers of meaning for me.

For Janet, who chose her name around 28 years ago, it wasn’t so much the meaning, as that the initials and number of letters in our new name matched those of our birth name. I have no idea why that was important, but hey, each to their own.

In some cases, alters were just born with their names. In other cases, members of the system came up with a nickname, and it stuck. For instance, one of our child alters is named “Tso”. That stands for “The Silent One”, because she’s non-verbal. She’s young enough she also doesn’t read or write, so she couldn’t really tell us her name. AFAIK, she’s happy with Tso.