The Importance of My Name Change

See also: Personal Update: A New Me

Background

Yes — my pen name has changed again. But this time, it’s different. This time, it’s real. After years of wrestling with my sense of identity and trying to find a name that felt like home, I’m finally taking the step to legalize the one that has stayed with me through every draft, every reinvention, and every version of myself: Dylan.

It’s been a long, complicated process, and I’ve gone through more name changes than I ever expected. Each shift reflected something I was working through, something I was trying to understand about who I was becoming. Now, I’m ready to claim the name that feels permanent—a name that's the very embodiment of me. 

Starting the Journey

Most people assume that changing your name is simply about wanting a fresh start—but for me, it’s been something far deeper. After decades of searching for an identity that felt steady, authentic, and truly mine, I learned that a name change isn’t just a decision. It’s a journey. A long, personal process of self‑discovery, self‑acceptance, and finally feeling rooted in who I am.

For years, I never felt fully connected to my birth name. It didn’t feel like home, and it didn’t reflect the person I was becoming. The desire to change my legal name had been quietly growing for a long time, but it wasn’t until my baptism that the path forward became clear. During that moment, Dylan Sabrina was chosen as my spiritual name—with Dylan representing the name I was “supposed” to have at birth, and Sabrina chosen for symbolic and spiritual reasons.

As time passed, I realized I wanted to honor that distinction. Sabrina belongs to my spiritual life—the part of me that is reflective, inward, and sacred. But Dylan is the name that fits my everyday world: my writing, my creativity, my relationships, my legal identity, and the person I move through life as. So while Sabrina will remain part of my spiritual practice, Dylan is the name I’m choosing to carry forward into every other aspect of my life—including making it my full legal name.  

My Personal Identity

TThe name I was given at birth never truly resonated with who I felt I was. Growing up, I always sensed a disconnect between my name and my identity — like I was trying to inhabit something that didn’t quite fit. That feeling was only amplified by the speech challenges I had as a child. I struggled with two different types of lisps: I couldn’t pronounce my S’s, and I couldn’t distinguish between “f,” “ph,” and “th.”

“Thirsty” became “firsty,” “fishy” became “thishy,” and “Stephanie” became “Dethanie.” From the very beginning, people rarely understood me when I said my own name. I was constantly mistaken for Destiny, Daphne, Bethany — anything but the name I was trying to say. And while the jokes (“Step on Me,” courtesy of Full House, or “Staph [infection]”) didn’t necessarily hurt my feelings, they certainly didn’t help me feel connected to the name I was supposed to claim as mine.

Over time, that disconnect grew into something deeper. My birth name didn’t align with the personality, aspirations, or sense of self I wanted to embody. I felt small inside it—limited by the teasing, the mispronunciations, and the feeling that I was trying to grow into a shape that wasn’t meant for me.

So I started exploring. First small variations, then entirely different names—Effie, Kay—each one an attempt to find something that felt more authentic. Eventually, I landed on my baptized name, Dylan Sabrina, and for the first time, I felt a sense of alignment. These two names reflected parts of me that my original name never could.

If you look up the meaning of Sabrina, you’ll find it’s of Celtic origins—the same roots that make up most of my ancestry. It carries symbolism that resonated with me deeply, something I wrote about years ago (back in 2019) when creating a character who felt personally significant. I explored that meaning on my Writing It Out... blog, "Happy May! A Personal Update" long before I realized how closely it mirrored my own journey:

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Another quick search will tell you that Dylan comes from the Welsh elements dy (“great”) and llanw (“tide” or “flow”), often interpreted as “great tide.” In gender‑neutral contexts, it can also mean “being delivered from the sea—either through birth or through baptism.”

That meaning struck a chord with me in a way I didn’t expect. In 2016, I underwent a deeply significant baptism—one that reshaped my entire outlook on life and set me on a spiritual path I never imagined for myself. It was the catalyst that eventually led me to become an ordained minister, determined to guide others through the same kind of transformative journey I experienced.

Because of that, both Dylan and Sabrina hold profound meaning for me. Sabrina carries symbolic and spiritual weight—rooted in Celtic heritage and tied to personal reflections I wrote years ago, and thus it's the name I have decdided to reserve for my spiritual life. Dylan reflects the person I am in my everyday life: creative, grounded, evolving, and moving forward with purpose. 

Choosing to keep Sabrina as my spiritual name while becoming Dylan has allowed me to express myself more authentically and confidently—in my personal life, my professional work, and my creative identity. It’s a balance that honors both sides of who I am.

The Greater Significance

Names often carry cultural, familial, and personal weight. They’re usually chosen with intention — deliberated over, imagined, and spoken aloud long before a child is born. That was the case with Dylan, the name my parents wanted for me from the moment they learned I was “swimming around” in my mom’s womb. Everyone told them I’d be a boy, and they never once questioned it.

But when I arrived, their heteronormative assumptions took over. In their minds, a girl couldn’t be named Dylan — so they scrambled for alternatives. My birth name was chosen almost at random, after three days of indecision, and neither of them felt fully satisfied with it. My dad later admitted that when he met a girl named Dylan years afterward, he felt an immediate sense of “buyer’s remorse.” It simply never occurred to either of them that they could have changed my name legally.

Fast‑forward to when I was around twelve or thirteen. I discovered a TV show featuring a female character named Dylan, and something clicked. I related to her deeply—not because our circumstances were the same, but because she was navigating her own identity in a way that mirrored my internal struggle. For the first time, I felt a strong pull toward the name that had almost been mine.

But at the time, I lived just two streets away from a boy named Dylan—someone I’d once had a crush on (when I was four 😂). The neighborhood bully weaponized that against me for years regardless. 

I knew that if I tried to adopt the name back then, she would have twisted the choice into something cruel, accusing me of changing my name out of some stalker‑ish obsession. Whether she actually said it after I told her or I simply knew her well enough to anticipate it, the result was the same: I didn’t feel safe choosing the name I wanted.

So I experimented. I tried on different identities, searching for something that felt right. But nothing fit. Nothing felt like home.

What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t searching for a new name at all. I was trying to return to the one that had been meant for me from the beginning—the name my parents wanted, the name I wanted, the name that felt aligned with who I truly was.

I was trying to find my way back to Dylan.

A Fresh Start

Earlier, I mentioned that most people assume changing your name is simply about wanting a fresh start—and in many ways, I suppose that was the initial motivation behind my decision. For years (decades, if I’m being honest), I floundered between identities, trying to find a name that felt like a clean slate. Changing my name symbolized the beginning of a new chapter, a conscious choice to leave behind the negative associations and experiences tied to my old one.

That fresh start began with my baptism. In the aftermath of that transformative moment, I chose a symbolic spiritual name with great care: Dylan Sabrina. At the time, the intention was clear—this name was meant for spiritual settings only, a reflection of the inner work I was doing and the identity I was growing into.

But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that distinction. I began using Sabrina in everyday life simply because it shared an initial with my birth name, and I reserved Dylan for spiritual contexts. It was a shallow, almost arbitrary decision, and I never felt fully at peace with it. From 2019 onward, while navigating severe health challenges that upended my world, I felt increasingly unsettled — disconnected from myself and from the symbolic name I was misusing in daily life.

It wasn’t until the middle of 2024, after moving, healing, and finally regaining clarity, that I understood what had been wrong all along. It wasn’t that I had chosen the wrong symbolic name — it was that I had assigned the wrong role to each name. Sabrina was always meant to be spiritual, symbolic, and sacred. Dylan was always meant to be my everyday identity — the name I should have been using in casual life, creative work, and ultimately, as my legal name.

Once I accepted that truth, everything shifted. I began transitioning away from my birth name and the various pseudonyms I’d used over the years, choosing instead to step fully into Dylan. That transition has been profoundly empowering — a reclamation of my narrative and a deliberate step toward new opportunities. Choosing Dylan as my legal name has been liberating, marking yet another pivotal moment in my ongoing journey of personal growth and self‑discovery.

Conclusion

As I’ve said, my original name was supposed to be Dylan; a name that’s tied to an important thought process that never was able to come to fruition. A process my actual birthname did not fully encompass. It seems admittedly a little insane to me that the influences from infant hood in regards to name Dylan have positively shaped me in a way that my actual birth name could not. But by choosing a name that honors multiple aspects of my background and history, I am finally able to pay homage to my infanthood and my parents in a way that feels inclusive and representative of my true self. This change has also provided me with a sense of connection to a broader narrative that I feel proud to put out to the world.

Changing my name to Dylan is and has been a crucial step in aligning my external identity with my internal sense of self. It has allowed me to embrace my true identity, honor my parents’ wishes for me prior to my birth, and embark on a new chapter in my life with confidence and clarity. The importance of this decision cannot be overstated, as it has profoundly impacted my life in meaningful and lasting ways. Through this change, I have found a name that truly represents who I am and who I aspire to be. Above all, it is me. No words can stress how truly great it is, that I can finally understand the significance of my own identity.

Written 8th June 2018 © Dylan K. Regan