Odd topic: feeling distance toward your own name

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I've hated my first name my whole life. It's an old fashioned European name that's hardly ever heard in my country and when it was used maybe a couple of generations before my birth, it was still rare. Whenever I hear it used I hear my mother's disgusting voice. She never spoke sweetly. Always harsh. So there's that psychological memory as well as the teasing and the invariable difficulties I had with my name as a child and into my teens because my full name was so foreign. My surname is perfect for making up all manner of idiotic nicknames. I'd exchange Schrodinger over my surname any day of the week.

Although, I love the meaning of my first name which comes from Latin, the actual name feels ugly and painful to me so hearing it bothers me. I think it added to my difficulties growing up. I never fit in and school, although I excelled academically, socially was a brutal place for me. I decided a few years ago, after I turned 40 that enough was enough. I hate my name so why should I continue to use it? I have 2 middle names and I use a short form of one of them now. My immediate family still insists on calling me by my given first name, which bugs me, but it's what they're used to. Everywhere else (work and friends), I use my middle name now. It's a fairly common name, but classic and I like it. I feel it suits me.

I've also experienced the mirror thing you described. It used to happen to me frequently when I was younger. It doesn't happen quite as much now, but still once in a while I feel separate from the person I'm looking at in the mirror. It's an odd feeling for sure.

Interesting that someone mentioned the name tag thing. I HATE that. I feel that some complete stranger just coming up to me and addressing me by my first name out of the blue is an invasion just as much as invading my personal space. Good riddance to days in past jobs when I had to wear those idiotic things. It's demeaning. Anyone wants to know my name...they're on a need to know basis! Fark that s**t.

I really dislike my first name -- it's horribly common and I never felt associated with it. For the most part, I go by my middle name which I like a great deal more, though my close family will not call me by anything but my first name. As for my last name, it's the name of a mathematical formula (mispelled a bit but pronounced the same) so I like that but I don't really associate with my father or fathers side of the family, so I have a pretty good feeling I'll eventually change my first and last name to something else (first to my middle name, last to ???)

I've never associated my reflection with me. Same with whenever I hear my voice recorded or see myself in a video or photographs. It's somewhat strange.

I always hated my name because I felt it wasn't me. But after years of mental and emotional abuse I had to change it. Sure my name is still "Jessica" on paper, but my name is actualy, "Kalahari".

My family hated it originaly and gave me all kinds of BS excuses such as it was too hard to pronunce; they pronounced it perfectly when mocking me. It was too exotic and not a "white person's" name; I guess Jessica isn't a black or Asian person's name either then? Or it wasn't Bibical; someone had to make names like Mary or John up at one time and to my knowledge there is no one in the Bible named Jessica.

I will probably end up getting my name legally changed to Kalahari and my stick-in-the-mud family will just have to deal with it. "Jessica" evokes bad memories of bullying and abuse. One teacher in paticular made me feel I was naturaly a bad person. My "Jessica" name has been permenitaly tainted but must be discarded.