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My birth name was Felicia Lawson. My mother was a teen mom and my father disappeared when I was a infant and we didn't have any contact for 20 years. When mom got married, he legally adopted me so I could have his last name and he wanted to be my dad, not just my step-dad. At the age of 7, my name was legally changed from Felicia Lawson to Felicia L'Heureux.

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the meaning of this name is happy, or fortunate. It stems from the Latin word Felicitas, born from the Saint Felicitas who was celebrated for converting to Christianity at a time when baptisms were punishable by death. She became a saint because she was always happy despite her illegal action of converting and untimely death

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The Cultural Significance of Felicia in my Family

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The Cultural Significance of Felicia in my Family

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My family has no cultural connections to this name, and it was chosen simply because my mother liked the way it sounded. My family values keeping the name given at birth more than the cultural significance of the name, the only time they used to accept a name change was when a woman got married and changed her last name to his.

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A year ago, I legally changed my first name to Rene. I spent 16 years hating my name before I finally decided to go through with it.

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I got called a lot of names in elementary school, but the worst one was feces, the anatomic word for poop. I was 6 when I first wanted to change my name, but couldn't as a minor. I always knew there was a great deal of controversy around name changes in my family, so I had a really hard time making this decision. I knew I would risk my parents disowning me, as well as both my great grandmothers. Mentioning my wish to my mother when I was 18 was scary enough that I couldn't do it. When my bio father said my name was his choice but he understood if I wanted to change it helped make the choice easier, but it wasn't until my dad told me my name was his choice that I actually changed it. I knew he was lying about choosing my name because he didn't know me until I was 5 years old, and I hate being lied to, so I legally changed my name before telling him that it was even on my mind. Once I changed it, I provided copies of the document for insurance when I told my parents. They were very mad and hurt about it, and still won't use my new name but I've stopped answering them if they use my dead name so hopefully they'll catch on.

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When I was considering my name change, I had to choose a name that I liked, but I also wanted to consider the names my partner liked. I knew I wanted something gender-neutral as I had already gone through all the legal processes of changing my gender to non-binary a few months before. There were only two gender-neutral names I liked, Ari and Rene, so when my partner said he really didn't like Ari my choice was easy and I went to fill out the forms.

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The name Rene comes from the French word re-né and the Latin word Renatus, both meaning rebirth or born again. This name is typically associated with the philosophical and surrealism worlds. A couple noted people are French philosopher Rene Descartes and Belgian artist Rene Magritt, both of whom were and are still considered the best in their field.