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Not a trans person, but often yes. Real-life examples for me include Jeffrey->Jessie, Andy->Amy, Ian->Liani, Emmitt->Emilia. But don't go around dead-naming trans folks because it's a source of trauma for most.
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Not trans, but trans adjacent. IME roughly half and half: more deadname-like than chance alone, but not enough to count as a group-wide trend.
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depends on the person, anecdotally its like 60/40 in favor of variations on the original theme. The ones that most commonly get ditched are names that were already unisex in my experience. I guess just for a more clean break in identity but who really knows?
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i tried to think of a name that started with the same letter as my old one, just for the ease of my initials not changing, but couldn't think of any i liked so it's unrelated i know some ppl who went with vaguely similar names but direct equivalents are uncommon i'd say
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small sample size, but the three trans friends I have all chose somewhat derived names (2 millennial, 1 gen x)