Most people know me as Chrissi, I mean Yes this blog is called ´Call me Chrissi´, however I am officially born and still on my passport Chris and this has brought a lot of people thinking to make fun of me. One negative, which has put me down for years and still does is receiving letters with ´Monsieur´ on it. Even recently I received a letter and saw straight away it said Monsieur. I even called them up to tell them I am woman, like I filled it out on their document. I even said to my mom: ´I bet they will think I am a man´ and guess what they did. Even after that call, 2 letters later, I am still put down as Monsieur. I might be a small problem, but it hurts. Another example is being in the hospital and them calling me Mister and it actually drives me mad. I am in a hospital and they have ALL of my documents and information about past visits and surgeries and even me going to the gynaecologist, yet they are incapable of looking at it. No one means it in a vicious way, because they simply recognise the name Chris as male, however it has brought down my self-cesteem a lot over the years.
Having done gymnastics from a small age, I had a lot of muscle and until I reached puberty (which wasn´t until 15 years old), my body was built with very big shoulders, no hips and abs. I always had a very strong body and most people brought that in relation to my name and called me a man. I dreaded the first day of school with new teachers asking kids for their names… and maybe in English there isn´t a male or female pronoun before a name but in Luxembourgish there is and all the teachers automatically assumed I was male.
Another example, that stayed in my head until now, is every time a teacher in 7th and 8th grade asked for a strong boy in class to go and pick up the books from the reception of the school, most people in my class looked at me or said ´Chris will go´. No one probably meant it in a mean way, however it stuck and I hated it. I had issues understanding that my body got into puberty a lot later than most girls and that it would take longer to look more feminine. I started wearing more dresses and always wanted pink things, so people would know and realise I was a girl.
Until this day I cannot stand when people even in slang call me ´Man´. I know it is never meant in a vicious way, but it does feel like a sting in my stomach. I tend to correct people and shortly explain why I hate it, but people sometimes just put me down as too sensitive.
I was bullied in school and in gymnastics, for the way I looked, dressed and behaved. Being called a man, when you definitely just want to feel like a woman hurts. I do not even want to know how those actually being transgender feel as it must be much worse than just having a non-gendered name. I do not know if any other people with names such as Sam, Sidney or Noah ever experienced the same thing. It also did not help that in secondary school I had another boy in my class also called Chris and then when I finally went to uni, the first friendship group I entered also had a Chris. Although I told them to call me Chrissi to avoid mix-ups, I actually liked having a feminine name as for once everyone knew right away I was a woman. I had Chrissi on my social polo and uniform for my cheer team and society.
Most people in uni probably only found out today reading this that I am really Chris. I have all my social media with Chrissi and even back home people start calling me Chrissi, although I actually slowly come to terms with the name Chris. Fun fact is that my parents didn´t want to know my gender until birth , so picked my name based on a famous male football player and a famous female tennis player. They also wanted a name for me and my sister, where people couldn’t give us a nickname or shorten it, so here we are making it longer. Don´t get me wrong I love the name Chris, it just so happened that people always related it to me being a man, which hurt. If you do call me Chris in Luxembourg I´ll answer right away, in the UK not so much. I have started to see Chrissi in the UK as the translation to Chris in Luxembourgish.
Since a couple of months I am now also a freelance radio host and although I wanted to call myself Chris, there was a Chris already at the station, so I had to go with Chrissi. But just to be clear, I answer to both, but would super duper appreciate if no one ever calls me a man.
Guess you can call me Chrissi or Chris xxx
Call me Chrissi! 