Oh sure another thing for indecisive people to be anxious about

Lots of people for a long time have introduced themselves by nicknames or preferred names. So I think, in some ways, this is already normalized but not formalized. Formalization would have benefits and drawbacks. More normalization could of course occur without formalization.

A bit less seriously, I don't think anyone should be burdened with whatever cringey name they would've chosen for themselves as a teenager (when these sorta rites of passage traditionally occur). There are solutions to this, of course.

tbh, i like that my name was chosen before i was born. that way, aside from things like ethnicity and gender, it’s pretty much disconnected from who i am.

when i came out as trans and had to pick a new name i hated that i already had all these associations with them and i dreaded someone asking me why i picked those in particular. in the end i settled on two names my parents picked as girl names before i was born (which looking back i had already identified somewhat with when i first heard them as a kid).

This is goofy lol. Am we just supposed to refer to babies as a series of numbers and letters until they reach the age of 5 where the child will call themselves CIA Soldier Optimus Prime Squarepants?

it also shouldnt be such a pain in the ass to legally change ur name. like, im not gonna do that bc im entering a "professional" career (im a PMC karen, ik) and i dont want something as banal as a name change to complicate that. also, i really dont get dysphoria from my name, especially since its very easy to have fem nicknames for it. but yeah, it should be commonplace to pick ur own name if you want. personally, i just like not having to make that decision

This has been a thread.

(I don't like my names, but I also don't have any replacements. When people refer to me by my gamertag, I also cringe. I think I just don't like being perceived or referred to.)

In ancient China, men typically took a "Courtesy Name" at adulthood and it was more polite to refer to their courtesy name

Counterpoint: If you choose it yourself you have nobody to blame if it is lame or sucks or if it just happens not to be the most unique perfectly meaningful name ever. People would be insecure and change their names all the time, making it really hard to remember what people's names are.

On the other hand if your parents choose a dumb name for you it's on them, you can laugh about it and get on with life and really, who cares? A name is just a number and all that. If you feel really bad about it you can have it changed but there would be no social pressure for you to do so and having a boring regular name would not mean you didn't take your personal branding seriously.