'A matter of physical safety': What it means to deadname someone and the impact it makes

Merriam-Webster named “authentic” its 2023 Word of the Year, but other top contenders included “indict,” “rizz” and “deadname.” These words reflect increased search and cultural impact.

“Deadnaming” is one word that’s coming up on the campaign trail – the local one, that is. In Ohio, three out of four transgender candidates have been challenged or disqualified based on an elections law that penalizes candidates who don’t put their former names on petitions, the Associated Press reported.

But what is a deadname and what does it mean to call someone by it?

What is deadnaming?

Deadnaming is when someone refers to a transgender or nonbinary person by a name they used before transitioning. This is often the name they were assigned at birth, also called a deadname.

Deadnaming can be intentional or unintentional. Both instances cause harm.

“It isn’t just a matter of comfort (for trans people), it’s a matter of physical safety,” Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality told USA TODAY. “How you address someone tells them a lot about how you view them as a person and also communicates to other people how they should treat that person.”

The early insights report of the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey released in February found 22% of respondents had been verbally harassed, assaulted, asked to leave a location or denied services because they showed an ID that did not match their gender presentation.

Not all transgender and nonbinary people change their names, but for those who do, legal recognition of their name and gender on official documents is an important part of transitioning.

“Trans people all have different relationships to the different names that we’ve used in our lives. For some people, being addressed by a previous name, a deadname, … is no more irritating than being called by a nickname they don’t care for,” Hunt says. “For other people, it’s like being called a slur.”

The Trevor Project’s “National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2021” found transgender and nonbinary youth who lived with people who respected their pronouns had fewer suicide attempts compared to those who did not. Similarly, transgender and nonbinary youth who were able to change their legal documents attempted suicide fewer times than those who were not legally able to.

At least 32 transgender and gender-expansive people were killed in 2023, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which tracks fatal violence against the trans community every year. Half of the victims were misgendered or deadnamed by authorities or the press.

What is misgendering?

Misgendering is the act of addressing someone in a gendered way that does not reflect their gender identity or expression, including using incorrect pronouns.

Is deadnaming against the law?

There are no federal laws surrounding deadnaming, though local and state legislature have moved in both directions in recent years – some providing legal security for trans and nonbinary individuals’ name and pronoun usage and others forcing them to use deadnames in school settings.

In 2021, California became the first state to ban colleges from deadnaming students on university records. Social media apps have updated their use guidelines to ban deadnaming. In 2023, Discord added deadnaming and misgendering to its hate speech guidelines. TikTok banned both in 2022. Twitter, on the other hand, quietly rolled back its former policy against deadnaming and misgendering in April 2023.

But in a recent wave of anti-trans legislation, other laws – many proposed in the name of parental rights – would force schools to use trans or nonbinary students’ and teachers’ deadnames and pronouns that do not reflect their gender identity.

"The vast majority of these restrictive bills do not pass, but their impact is still dangerous: LGBTQ youth report that these political discussions negatively impact their mental health," GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement to USA TODAY in 2023.

Hunt points out an important discrepancy – teachers will likely still respect the nicknames of cisgender students, like “CJ” or “Sam” whose full legal name is Samantha. The issue, she says, is not about a child’s legal name and gender assigned at birth but of ostracizing trans people.

“We know that rules like these are almost always going to be inconsistently applied, and because of the intent behind them, we can expect they almost always only be applied in ways that are hurtful for some of the most marginalized children,” Hunt says.

Three Florida educators are currently suing to block one of these state laws that did pass.

"Many teachers have already left the profession – and the state – in response to discriminatory laws Florida passed to push LGBTQ+ people out of public life and erase their existence," the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in a news release.

Trans people face barriers to legal document changes

Updating the name and gender marker on legal documents like state IDs, passports, birth certificates and Social Security cards is an important step that can make it easier for trans people to “go about our daily lives and be part of our communities,” Hunt says.

Nearly half of respondents in the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey said none of their IDs listed the name they wanted.

Record updates aren’t easy to achieve. In some states, there are expensive and time-consuming hurdles that some trans people might not even want to go through, like proof of surgery or a certification from a medical professional. Not every trans person wants to get surgery, so this presents another challenge. Aside from any costs from required medical procedures, at the very minimum, there is the cost of filing for new records.

Cost varies per state. In Maine, for example, the filing fee for a name change is generally only $40. In California, it’s $435. Some states also require you to publish your name change in a local newspaper for several weeks, which may run another hundred dollars or more, Hunt says.

These attached costs present significant barriers to the trans community, Hunt says. Trans people are more likely to be in poverty than cisgender Americans.

Trans workers report twice the rate of unemployment as the general population and are four times more likely to have a household income of under $10,000. This particularly affects trans people of color. The HRC found "almost half of Latine transgender adults (48%), as well as approximately four in ten Black transgender adults (39%), are living in poverty."

“Discrimination is cumulative,” Hunt says. “The more steps you are away from the most privileged demographics in the country, the more you have stacked against you.”

Out of Florida: State bars gender changes on driver's license

Just Curious for more? We've got you covered.

USA TODAY is exploring the questions you and others ask every day. From "What does the B in LGBTQ stand for?" to "What is anxiety?" to "What is ranked choice voting?" – we're striving to find answers to the most common questions you ask every day. Head to our Just Curious section to see what else we can answer for you.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is a deadname? How deadnaming harms trans and non-binary folks.