Having written "Notes on a Name Change", I figured that pretty much took care of the matter. But in fact, I've been getting a few practical questions from colleagues about it, including some things I hadn't really thought about!

In part inspired by Matt Kirchenbaum's Eye FAQ, here's the succinct answers to questions I've gotten about my name and name change. If I come across new questions, I will expand it. These are my own answers with regard to myself and are not meant to be prescriptive for anyone else who's changed their name. Do ask them what they prefer!

How should I cite publications under your previous name?

Please cite them as published! I'm certainly not going to go back and try to amend them all. More philosophically, I think there's some utility in being able to so clearly mark what part of my life a particular piece was from. I am, fundamentally, more a practitioner than a researcher, and to the extent that I'm a scholar, it's through having learned things the hard way (complete with pressing a lot of buttons marked "Caution! Do not press!"). I don't do theory. The examples may be composite or anonymized but it's all true.

There are things I managed to do as Quinn Dombrowski that now as Quinn Daedal I couldn't, or certainly wouldn't. It seems fair to me to give my past self their due.

How should I refer to you in the text of a paper?

I hadn't thought through this until I got a message from Winnie E. Pérez Martínez asking after it! She offered a nice option with "Quinn Daedal (previously Dombrowski)...". I like it. Feel free to go with something along those lines!

How do I pronounce your last name?

The great thing about making up a name is that there's no "right" pronunciation that comes along with it. My ex's family pronounced "Dombrowski" like you would expect in American English ("Dom-BROW-ski"), but in Slavic departments, sometimes people would try to get cute and Polish (Dąbrowski) about it.

Anyhow, it's derived from Daedalus, which already has its own adaptations into all the world languages where people have taken up an interest in Greek mythology. Pronouncing it the same way you'd pronounce Daedalus is good by me. Myself, I pronounce it like "dreidel" without the "r", but however you do it is also fine!

How do I pronounce your first name?

This one is harder. I've always liked my first name! It turns out a lot of other nonbinary people do, too, according to the results of the 2026 Nonbinary Names Survey.

But phonologically it's a bit of a disaster. I feel for any non-native English speakers who encounter it. It's pronounced /kwɪn/, with that unfortunate ɪ vowel that can be hard to pronounce or differentiate from the vowel in "queen" (which seriously undercuts the pleasant gender-neutrality of the name.) When I was in college and dreamed of living abroad, I changed my middle name to Anna to have a name option that wouldn't get so mangled.

At this point, though, I've come to terms with it. I live and work in Anglophone contexts and probably will for the foreseeable future. I know it's a hard name if you don't have that vowel, and I don't begrudge however it comes out.

What pronouns should I use for you?

In English, I prefer they/them. In other languages, I know it can get complicated fast. If there's emerging practices for how to refer to nonbinary people (e.g. elle and generally using -e suffixes in Spanish), go for that if it's not going to make the editor mad? But if it's still very niche, politically fraught, or there's no widely accepted consensus, I use female pronouns as a fallback in other languages.