To Ë or not to É…

Since transitioning, I’ve been debating changing my name, because my birth name (first and last), while gender-neutral to most non-Greeks, is feminine in the Greek language. That name, Δανάη, is often transliterated to English as “Danaë”.

For years already, my family has called me the masculine form of that name, Δαναός. Seems like an obvious choice to start using in English, right? Here’s where it gets a little complicated.

Greek grammar has “cases” (if you studied Ancient Greek or Latin you may remember the concept). For example, when you address someone directly (the vocative case), you conjugate their name from its base form. For someone named Nikos, you’d address him “hey, Niko!” (no S on the end). For the name Δαναός, the name you’d use is Δαναέ (Danaé).

So that’s how we got here! A few more questions you might have:

Why not go by Danaos?

• In short, personal preference. I do, in Greek. But in English it seems silly to change my name more substantialy, only to have people addressing me in a way that sounds wrong to my ear. I also don’t want to change (masculinize) my last name for many reasons, and I personally don’t like the way the combination (Danaos + Metaxa) looks ungrammatical to me. Plus I just don’t like how it sounds in English. In any case, this choice is actually quite common; any Greeks you know named Dimitri, Niko, Angelo, etc. (in other words, most masculine Greek names that don’t have the final S) are doing this same grammatical trick.

Doesn’t Danaé Metaxa still look like a feminine name to someone who speaks Greek?

• Maybe, yeah; I kind of like the ambiguity. But maybe this will feel super awkward in practice, when I meet other Greeks in English-speaking settings. This brings us to the next point:

Why not change my name to something entirely different?

• Who knows, I still might! But it’s an administrative hassle (legal paperwork, amending old publications), it’s an interpersonal hassle (everyone getting used to the change, colleagues keeping track of my name/work), it’s expensive, and I like my name in Greek quite a lot. So I’m going to try this out first, and see how it goes.

Perhaps the most important one: how do I pronounce your name?

• Unless you’re Greek and can say Δαναέ, you can pronounce it as always: “da-nah-AY” or, said quickly/for ease of memory, something like “deny” (the verb/like the river in Egypt). My pronouns in English are still they/them, and in Greek are ο/του.

Thanks for your interest!