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Fighting for your name

  • Writer: River Champeimont
    River Champeimont
  • 7 days ago
  • 5 min read
A cartoon shows a determined young woman wearing a shirt with a transgender symbol. She is pulling on a long chain of papers labeled “deadname,” as if trying to remove a huge pile of outdated documents connected to her former name.

One of the hardest and most frustrating aspects of my gender transition was changing my name, not because of the legal difficulty (in Ontario it’s rather easy) but because of the dozens of places where I needed to update it and the need to argue, call people and do paperwork. Even though I officially changed my name in 2024, I’m still fighting to change it in some places.


For me, as for many trans people, seeing my deadname is distressing. It makes me feel gender dysphoria because my deadname is associated with the wrong gender. I therefore experience the same feeling of disgust that I experience when I’m misgendered.


I went to great lengths to change my name everywhere, and I counted 60+ places where it is not tied to my legal name and is purely a preferred name. The hard part is when the name you provide must be your legal name. These require a lot of administrative interactions because you need to prove your legal name change. I counted 22 of these.


Citizenship

But first, let me start with a piece of big news since my last article on this blog: I became a Canadian citizen!


When applying for citizenship, there are some additional documents which allow you to request the citizenship certificate directly with your new name and gender, even if you emigrated under your deadname and incorrect gender. On the day of the citizenship ceremony, I was therefore given the certificate below with my correct name and gender!


A photograph of part of a Canadian citizenship certificate. The certificate prominently displays the name “River Adèle Champeimont” beneath bilingual English and French headings.

This means a lot to me, because it allows me to finally have a passport with my true gender and name!


Until now, when flying internationally, I had to use my French passport, and since the procedure to change my name is still not finished in France (and is much harder than in Ontario), it resulted in me being deadnamed and misgendered when booking tickets and flying.


For instance, the email below reads “Dear Mrs. River Champeimont, your flight tickets are attached”. Until I got my Canadian passport, I got misgendered and deadnamed in those.

A screenshot of an Air France email in French. The message is addressed to “Madame River Champeimont” and says that her airline tickets are attached, using her current name.


Successes

In a lot of places, people agreed to change my name provided I show legal proof.


When it comes to public administrations, I did driver’s license, health card, vehicle permit (these first 3 all at the same time), SIN record (online), CRA (simple call).


When it comes to businesses, it worked rather well with many like RBC, Paypal, Alectra utilities (the electricity utility where I live), and Flying Blue.


In some places, I was able to change my name, but I needed to insist a lot. For instance, I had to do the procedure 3 times with Aéroplan (Air Canada’s frequent flyer program), contrary to their competitor Flying Blue (Air France’s) which made the change immediately.


Radical measures

What is really annoying is when businesses can’t change your name properly everywhere. For instance, they change it in one place, but it does not propagate everywhere and you continue to see your deadname popping up in places.


For instance, Wise (an international bank) allowed me to change my deadname, but would not change it in Interac nor in the “Wisetag” (some kind of unique ID to send money to other customers). Also, they have a preferred name feature but it’s a scam! It does not show the preferred name anywhere, not even in the app in the profile page. I find it deeply disrespectful for the trans community to offer a fake feature like that.


Similarly, Bell Canada changed my name on invoices but continued to email me at my deadname email even though I had changed it everywhere.


Also, my insurance company did not update my name when I emailed them.


For me, it was unacceptable having my deadname stay forever in some places, so I closed the accounts and switched to other providers for the same services. It seems like a radical solution, but it’s entirely worth it in my case because I get the peace of mind that the new service is never going to deadname me, since they never even knew my old name. That’s why, for all the services above, I switched to competitors (Wise to Amex, Bell to Telus, Aaxel to Desjardins).


When you’re trapped

On the other hand, there are cases where you can’t just close the service. I had intense frustration with credit bureaus in Canada, Equifax and TransUnion. They are private companies but in practice an oligopoly, and it’s impossible to opt out of their services.


Equifax agreed to change my name and updated my credit report in 2025, but when I had the idea to check my credit report in 2026, I discovered that they had reverted to my deadname! My correct name just appears in the AKA field as a secondary name, but the full name as well as the title of the report are my deadname again!


Just as bad, their competitor TransUnion straight up refused to update my name in 2025, arguing that my correct name already appears in the “AKA” section. So they seem to think it’s fine that my deadname is the name in “full name” and as the title of the report…


Credit bureaus are the worst of both worlds. When it comes to public administrations, things are slow but at least they honor my legal right to change my name. When it comes to private companies, I can just end the service if they refuse to change my name. But credit bureaus are an oligopoly and there is no way to “close the account”, but they don’t respect my rights as public institutions generally would in Canada (like ServiceOntario, IRCC, the CRA, etc.)


My scientific legacy

Finally, I’m trying to change my name on my scientific articles, and I emailed every journal I have published in. So far, only 2 out of the 7 have answered and changed my name, and I was also able to change it on my PhD manuscript:


A photograph of the cover page of a bound doctoral thesis from Pierre and Marie Curie University (now part of Sorbonne University). The cover is in French and lists the field as Computer Science. The author’s name, “River Champeimont,” appears prominently in the center, above text stating that the thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Pierre and Marie Curie University.


Tricks

When there is no way to change my name in some places, for instance France’s tax website (since my legal name is not changed in France yet), I use a browser extension that visually replaces my deadname by my correct name.


In my emails, I added a filter to flag emails containing my deadname with a red “deadname” label to warn me (as a trigger warning basically), and also because it helps find the places where I need to change my name.


Trans joy

Sometimes the joy comes from subscribing to new services or organizations and having your true name from the start, with no fear that somewhere in their system your deadname still hides and will suddenly appear. I discovered that I quite like seeing my name in places because I feel celebrated as my true self, while in the past I was trying to hide myself because I would be celebrated as a fake version of me (for instance I never went to my PhD graduation ceremony).



Next steps

My next steps are probably going to be changing my name in France in various places, fighting again with the credit bureaus, and trying to get my scientific publications updated. Stay tuned!

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