ABSTRACT
Naming is an act of power. Names are conferred at birth, names are confirmed at baptisms, names can be changed when one marries. Adam’s first act in the world was to name all the creatures. Until recently, the only name gender-variant people had in Western societies were those classified by the sexologists. In the 1990s the term transgender was coined to describe a modern social and political experience. It is a grassroots word, a selfnaming.
