Name changes

[SaltPorridge]

Are there names which if a girl/boy asked you to use, you would feel uncomfortable with?
At the school where I work children have preferred names for various reasons, some obvious, others less so. Some kids ask to change pronouns and name, and in these cases, the new names are nearly always gender neutral.
Examples include Red, Alex, Zen.
Sometimes girls choose a short form of their birth name, eg Charlie forCharlotte.
Recently, a girl asked to be called a boy's name. I am struggling with this one. There are feminine forms but ttbomk the masculine form is never used for females, and is not a short form of a girl's name.
I guess my unease is that the other children could continue to use their new names if they revert to sex-based pronouns, but this feels like a bridgeburning.
I always tell the kids I will try to use the names they prefer, but my mouth is choking on this one.

If a name is just a name, then I'd have no problem, similar to a nickname. The child's real name should be used where necessary or otherwise required formally.

What is a "boy's name" or a "girl's name" is cultural and does change over time, I wouldn't suggest there needs to be too much thought about it.

The trouble is, it's often not just a name, and comes with other demands, such as pronouns, which would be a more troubling development and you'd be right to be cautious about encouraging or facilitating social transition.

To be clear, this is a girl asking for masculine pronouns and outright rejecting her given name.
The name she's chosen is unlikely to ever shift from being masculine.
Pretending that it might would feel like crossing my fingers behind my back.

@SaltPorridge I've been thinking about your question quite a bit. My professional advice would be to follow your school's instructions / policies, and keep fighting the long fight of making standard practice more safe and less misogynistic (contra instant, unquestioning affirmation).
But as a matter of conscience I think it's true you're being asked to endorse something you believe is harmful, particularly for young women, by using a different name. Even though the association with maleness or femaleness that names have is cultural it's still meaningful.
I never would have said this until reading the most recent tribunal thread, where someone compared change of name at transition with change of name at religious conversion. And I remembered that I have actually refused to use someone's new, chosen name because I didn't want to lend tacit approval to what I believe is a misogynistic religious movement. In this case it was a small religious movement assosiaciated with a guru who has been accused of sexual misconduct, and I didn't want to honour that movement or my friend's conversion by using the new name. It amounted to the end of our friendship, really, though it's possible we could have nutted out a comrpomise if I'd been more patient.
That doesn't really help you with your student, you're not friends - you're in a relationship of trust and authority over her. But that makes it worse in a way?? sorry, this is not helping much.
I just wanted to back up your sense that it's not neutral, using a new, male-coded name for this student.

Years ago I met a girl called John. She said her Dad was expecting a boy, chose the name and stuck with it. The name suited her as well, she was just John.

There's a female Michael in star trek. So I'd just go with it you get used to it

Thanks for replies. Over the years I have occasionally met women with outright masculine names - a Gareth, a Peter - probably others. But they weren't rejecting reality.
I feel like this kid needs someone to get her to talk it through.

My DD likes her professors to call her James. She has been adamant she is a ftm for years. She isn't and she has a boyfriend. It is a hard ideology to shake.
I don't use that name however I might use an approximation of it if she is feeling militant. It really does confuse everyone or cause them to be deeply worried they will be accused of transphobia if they get it wrong. One teacher asked to meet me to apologise. I have to say her former head teacher and her father never use her male name. She seems to accept that. Both scientists, both biologists. If you make a mistake correct it or move on. Transgender lives are hard and often unhappy in my experience.

This is really helpful. The school has given me no instructions- the name changes appear on SIMS, sometimes (but not always) with a note. Usually the other record systems do not have the name change, which is as confusing as it sounds. I find out when i call the register and the child corrects me or the whole class bursts out laughing and choruses either the new or old name.
I have asked to see the policy on trans twice and had no response. I am going to have to follow it up. Tact and diplomacy aren't my key skills but I will need them in bucketfuls.
The namechange as religious initiation is a way of seeing it. To be honest, the children I know who have declared themselves trans very often have disrupted pasts that they might reasonably want to put behind them. When it's a gender neutral name I have no problem, I see it separate from the pronouns.
A cross-sex name feels exactly as bad as using cross-sex pronouns. (i have yet to see a request for cross-sex salutations, but I don't imagine calling the child "Miss Surname" would go down well.)
Reading the comments around pronouns, there's an idea that complying with the child's request is polite, or is lying, but I feel that it is worse than lying, in that it is participating in a conspiracy to deceive.

I think a name change, to anything that isn’t offensive, is fine.

Resisting a change based on “that’s a boy’s name” is playing into the upholding sex stereotypes narrative. Although it’s clearly wrong that they have had to do this, women have de-sexed their names for many years in an attempt to be taken seriously. Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were not transmen. I don’t doubt Gareth Peirce has found some advantages in initially being mistaken for a man.

But the whole “use the wrong sex pronoun for me” solipsism is a whole other thing - as you say, a conspiracy to deceive for quasi-religious purposes - and I will not play along with that any more than I would pretend to pray in a church.

This is where the school is failing in its duty of care - both to the child. other children and staff.
Have you seen the new draft guidelines for schools OP? You could use these to ask SLT whether the school is using these as guidance or their own? It would be a non confontational way of raising the issue?

There's also a very useful piece from a clinical psychologist about the psychological harm being done to teenagers when everyone pretends that they're the opposite sex that I've attached below:

https://www.transgendertrend.com/teenager-says-theyre-transgender/

https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdf

Resisting a change based on “that’s a boy’s name” is playing into the upholding sex stereotypes narrative.

I don't think it's stereotype. It's a convention that this name - like John or Alexander - is used for males only, while names such as Joan or Alexandra are used for females.

Stereotype refers to beliefs such as women being fragile or delicate and men being tough or big. Dusty Springfield got her nickname because she defied the norm, and ran round playing football so she was always dusty. That's defying stereotypes.

Sex-based conventions perform a social function. We don't need sex-based names or pronouns - they provide extra information.

The Transgender Trend article MrsOvertonsWindow linked about social transition explains why it's not a neutral act: living with a masculine name and pronouns, a girl finds herself in conflict with every new person she meets and some people who keep forgetting. To ease her distress she feels attracted to the idea of modifying her body to match her name/pronouns.

If that's real, then agreeing to use a conventionally masculine name is not about defying stereotypes because the child herself has specifically gone for a name she sees as male, with the intention of pretending to be male. I would be pretending if I said "ooh well done how modern and progressive."

Am I making sense?

Yes, you are. I suppose I think it’s possible to go along with the name change on face value (as you might with Alexandra only answering to Alex, or Alexa changing her name to Sophia because of the Amazon device) while not going along with the pronouns. I’m probably keener on ignoring the conventions (in general) than you are?

I don’t think you’re wrong though.