In many cultures, given names are considered either masculine (e.g. John), feminine (e.g. Jane), or unisex (e.g. Jamie), and chosen according to an infant's assigned sex at birth.
[8] Transgender activists consider the deadnaming of homicide victims and high-profile celebrities by news media to be a violation of privacy, and a contributing factor to transphobia.
[10] Journalistic style guides, health-practitioner manuals, and LGBTQ advocacy groups advise adopting transgender people's names and pronouns, even when referring to them in the past, prior to transitioning.
[11][12][13] A 2021 survey by The Trevor Project showed that trans and nonbinary youth who changed their name, gender marker, or both on legal documents, including birth certificates and driver's licenses, had lower rates of suicide attempts.
[14] Queer scholar Lucas Crawford has theorized that some transgender people insist on preventing deadnaming in part as a strategy of prospective self-assertion: "by insisting on the primacy of the present, by seeking to erase the past, or even by emotionally locating their 'real self' in the future, that elusive place where access (to transition, health care, housing, a livable wage, and so on) and social viability tend to appear more abundant.
[10] For creatives, metadata containing a deadname (such as a film credit, a byline on a news article, or a published book with an ISBN), can be difficult or impossible to change.
Journalist and University of California researcher Theresa Tanenbaum reported frustration with attempting to update the 83 publications attributed to her deadname, with many publishers ignoring or refusing her request.
[19] In 2019, IMDb faced criticism from SAG-AFTRA, the National LGBTQ Task Force and GLAAD over its refusal to remove actors' birth names.
GLAAD spokesperson Nick Adams called the change a "step in the right direction" but "imperfect", and that trans people with credits under their deadname "will still be affected by IMDb’s determination to publish outdated information".