On deadnaming in systems design

Have you ever registered for a class or signed up for a service and been asked to supply your ‘legal name’—the name that appears on all or most of your ID documents?

Have you then had that name imposed on you in class or correspondence and made visible to your peers—even though it’s not the ‘first name’ and ‘surname’ you supplied elsewhere?

As a cis woman who continues to use her birth name professionally and a married name on personal documents such as my passport and driver’s licence, I’m lucky: I need navigate only frustrating conversations about why I’m entitled to use both names and why the name I choose to use professionally is the only name my peers should see.

But if I were trans, non-binary or otherwise gender-nonconforming, my experience would be very different.

What’s deadnaming?

There are many reasons why someone might choose to use a name other than that given to them at birth or adoption, or acquired on marriage. One of the most common is gender transition: when someone steps bravely into the world as their authentic self.

In these instances, the name that person used before may be known as their dead name.

It’s a phrase that calls to mind the trauma that can be triggered when our trans friend looks back at their life before—at the self they felt forced to perform. It also speaks to the grief that can attach should they and the people around them experience transition as a sort of goodbye to that former self.

While not all trans folk will feel this way, use the phrase or even change their name, for those who do being deadnamed—even by accident—can be exquisitely painful.

And if deadnaming is deliberate—perpetuated as ‘standard practice’ in policy, pro formas and the like—the effect is all the more acute.

Why might someone not have changed their ID to avoid deadnaming?

In an ideal world, everyone would be easily able to evidence their ID in all its forms.

As a married woman, for example, I wouldn’t be forced to choose between my birth name and my married name—both legally mine—when subsequently acquiring my driver’s licence or passport; I might be permitted to cite both.

But we don’t live in an ideal world—and, in many countries, ID requirements are stacked against those being asked to evidence a changed name.

One of the most obvious barriers is financial: the process of acquiring new documents can be costly—and not everyone who might want new ID to reflect a new name can afford it.

Another is legal: changing a name can be a complicated process—and all the more so when it means changing gender markers. While countries such as Canada (where Indigenous communities honour ‘two spirit’ identities) will now add a third gender marker, X, to a passport, countries such as the United Kingdom (increasingly hostile to its trans and non-binary citizens) continue to demand a binary M or F.

Sometimes, a person’s safety might be jeopardised should they change their name and seek to update their ID. For example, our trans friend might fear discrimination and harassment in their workplace should HR handle insensitively the news of their transition that changed ID delivers.

So, while not all people going by a new name will—or will want to—change their ID documents to reflect it, we must hold space for those who do but who can’t.

Why does deadnaming matter in systems design?

Most directly, deadnaming can be a form of discrimination prohibited under law. It puts your organisation at risk of legal action—and the financial and reputational costs that follow.

More holistically, if you’re a systems designer, you know that good systems centre a positive user experience (UX)—an experience we damage if we deadname our user.

A system that centres someone’s ‘legal name’ and automatically attaches that name to the user risks alienating them at the very outset. It can be confusing and frustrating at best; at worst, it can do a user harm.

• It risks invalidating the autonomy of someone whose name has been changed by marriage.
• It risks triggering trauma when our trans friend suddenly sees themselves deadnamed—and it risks outing them in unsafe spaces.
• It risks exposing someone who is using a new name in online and other systems spaces to escape stalking or domestic violence, for example, putting them directly in danger.

These are only some of the possible consequences.

Consequences that spotlight the high cost of systems insensitive to the many ways in which deadnaming can and does do harm.

How can systems designers avoid the risks of deadnaming?

Fortunately, there are solutions that you can build into systems at their birth or retrofit to improve those already functioning.

Take a few minutes to audit your systems for deadnaming—with questions that might help you imagine a more inclusive UX.

• ?Are you inviting your users to specify their preferred name when registering an account? And are you empowering them to change that name with ease, should they want to do so?
• Are all of the outputs from your system—correspondence, certificates, statements, etc—addressed to a user’s preferred name and no other?
• If your user needs to supply you with formal ID, perhaps because they’re taking an exam or you need to meet anti-money-laundering requirements, are you holding any different legal name securely?
• If there’s a genuine reason why you must use that name in ways that will be visible to your user and/or to others, are you including a rollover or other feature that forewarns the user—clearly and simply?
• Have you considered substituting unique identifiers for users' names as account information moves through your system, to avoid deadnaming even behind the scenes?

As we target more diverse user communities—recognising how few audiences we’ve been reaching and why—we’re learning how to do words differently to meet those users’ needs.

Doing words differently is at the heart of inclusively designed and equitably delivered systems and services.

And names—part of how we express our identities—are among the most powerful words of all.