Last year for Trans Day of Visibility, I made a zine about my gender journey that I shared as part of ourLove Letters to Trans Oklahomans campaign (which you can participate in this year, here). In it I shared some thoughts about my name, which I’ll reshare for you here.

My naming story is one very rooted in my sex assigned at birth. My parents were getting an ultrasound, and the doctor asked my parents if they’d picked a name for their future child, and they said they’d only decided on a boy’s name, Nicholas. And as they were reviewing the ultrasound, the doctor said, well it looks like you’re having a Nicole. So I’ve been Nicole my whole life. I’ve never been cool enough to be a nickname person in a way that sticks. I have a very small number of friends from my toddlerhood who call me Nene, and a group of folks I studied abroad with in college who call me Nikki.

It makes me get into my feelings about what it means to choose something and possibly choose wrong. To ask folks to call me something else and have them choose not to honor that ask. And yet, here’s an incomplete list of names I have considered as I wait to figure out if I have the courage to ask other folks to try exploring a possible new name for me: Cole, Nico, Nic, Noel, Campbell, Bobby, Fitz, Finley, Charlie, Ruth, Holland, Ollie. Without the limitations of someone else, there feels like so much possibility in who I could be, in choosing who I ask folks to see going forward.

While I shared that without a call to action, long time friend and frequent colleague Mo used that opportunity to start testing out names for me. Both in drafting things from Freedom Oklahoma accounts and in day to day life

Cole and their sister about the time they first remember dreaming about another name. ID: Cole and their sister pose in tennis shoes and dresses with their backpacks in front of a taupe door circa 1996/1997.

I think about the first time I can remember questioning my name. I was maybe 8, and decided I wanted to be called Rose (a nonbinary baddie opting for a botanical name, who could believe it), mostly because I knew Nicole didn’t fit, nor did my middle name, and I was still years away from unpacking that my feelings around the inspiration (Kate Winslet in Titanic) were more wanting her than wanting to be her. Any discussion of choosing an alternative name was pretty swiftly shut down. And so I was just Nicole for 27 more years without feeling like I could really have folks take any other option seriously.

But as it turns out, what Mo did was just the kind of support I needed to allow myself the same space I would always enthusiastically provide for others to explore identity. You’ve probably seen me more consistently sign off as Cole across Freedom Oklahoma platforms and beyond. Will it stick forever? I’m not sure, but it’s the fit that feels best right now.

So I’m inviting you in. Call me Cole. Call me by my name, even as I’m figuring it out.

The work of Freedom Oklahoma is multi-faceted. Your support means we can show up for community in so many ways. And sometimes that work is in the permission to change a name.

Support our work and more with a gift that’s meaningful to you.

With Love,

Cole