The acceptance he felt at Arcadia University helped student Ethan Rodriguez to reclaim his name, according to his self-authored entry in the Glenside educational institution’s blog.

Rodriguez chose Ethan as his name when he was 13, and he legally changed it when he was 16.

Once he turned 17, however, is choice of identifier started receiving strong backlash from family members.

“Something about the legalization of my name, something about the gender-affirming care I was receiving, really ground the gears of my conservative and religious family,” he wrote.

To avoid further conflict with his family, he started going by Lilly, his childhood nickname.

When he started college, he went in with the mentality of hiding himself. However, Arcadia turned out to be a lot different than his home environment.

“On day one, in my first class, I remember the teacher going around and allowing everyone to introduce themselves with their names and preferred pronouns,” he wrote. “I was astonished! The fact that it could be that easy, the idea that I could be myself, was so foreign, but it was so comforting.”

In his second year of college, he felt comfortable enough to officially change his name in the university’s system from Lilly to Ethan.

Read more about Arcadia University and its inclusive name change policy in its blog.

_____

Suggestions of nonbinary names.