Note: I announced on June 21 that I now have a new nickname, Skye (read that post by clicking here). Since then, I have heard from a number of people who have asked about the story behind it. This post tells that story.
Why am I now Skye?
The story of how Skye came to me basically began a number of years ago, with my recognition that I am nonbinary. I came out publicly as nonbinary three years ago, in an article called “God’s Pronouns” which appeared in the book of essays Soul Food. If you haven’t read that, click here for an excerpt — and here’s the gist: I’ve known since childhood that I was “different” but after years of shame for feeling that I was too feminine or simply “not man enough,” I came to understand that gender is for many people fluid, expansive, and not easily categorized as either male or female. This isn’t “transgender” in the sense of wanting or needing to transition from one gender to another.1 It’s just that for me, my gender identity and expression encompasses both masculine and feminine dimensions. I’ve learned that relatively few people my age use words like genderfluid or nonbinary, but these concepts are much more accepted, and widely understood, among younger generations.
I was well into my midlife years when I began to identify specifically as nonbinary. Connecting with or reading about other nonbinary persons introduced me to the idea of using gender-free pronouns (like the singular they/them), and I learned that many nonbinary persons changed their name, or adopted a nickname, to express a more unisex or non-gendered identity. Here are a couple of publicly known examples: when actor Rebecca Taylor-Klaus came out as nonbinary, they began to go by Bex instead of Rebecca; activist Grace Dunham (sibling of Lena Dunham) came out as nonbinary and began using the name Cyrus.
While I could see the beauty and grace of adopting a unisex or gender-free name and pronouns, I resisted doing so for a simple reason: I had already published numerous books, podcast episodes, and blog posts as Carl. I liked the name Carl, and so it seemed pointless to take on a new one. So I put it out of my mind.
But it appears that my heart and soul had a different idea.
An Unexpected Yearning
In 2025 my wife and I spent three weeks in Hawaii where I had a series of speaking engagements. But even with my work commitments, we also had plenty of free time to simply enjoy being together as a couple — as well as to enjoy being with our hostess and other friends. I hadn’t thought of those three weeks as a retreat, but it very much felt like that once we got there. Like any other retreat, I found myself giving more time to meditation, prayer, contemplation, and writing than I do on my normal workdays. I spent more time each day in silence, simply reflecting on my life and my work. It was in this context that I felt a surprising but sudden — and insistent — longing.
I felt a desire to embrace a new name.
Never mind how much I liked my given name, or thought that a new name was “impractical.” Once this desire showed up, it was insistent. The time had come for a new way to be addressed.
The name itself didn’t show up at first — only that desire for a new one.
I prayed about it and began doing research into names. Obviously, my first inclination was to consider nonbinary and unisex names. But even simple Google searches revealed hundreds of contenders. Many unisex and gender-free names have nature associations: Sage, Rowan, Alder, River, and so forth. I saw lots that I liked, but none that especially sang to me. Quickly feeling overwhelmed, I decided a little bit of narrowing down was called for, so I decided to consider three criteria in my search for a name:
it needed to be unisex/nonbinary;
it needed to have a clear Celtic association;
and it needed to have a contemplative, meditative, or mystical feel.
Even by limiting myself to names that fit each of these conditions, I still ended up with a torrent of options (I now have so much more respect for expectant parents and their responsibility to pick a name for their baby). I began to narrow the list down to only the ones that seemed to qualify in all three of these ways: unisex, Celtic and contemplative.
Eventually I narrowed it down to a list of about 30 possibilities. In that list, one name in particular sang to me: Skye.
Skye is more often given to girls than boys, but like Tracy or Kelly, it is shared by both genders often enough to show up on unisex lists.2 Since Carl clearly leans masculine, the idea of a feminine-leaning unisex name appealed to me. But it also fit my other two criteria: It is thoroughly Celtic, since it comes from the Isle of Skye off the northwest coast of Scotland. And as I have written elsewhere, the sky is a legendary metaphor for meditation, especially in Buddhism (this also means it has a pun embedded in it, which for me is definitely a bonus). It also evokes pre-Christian Celtic mythology where the elements of nature are understood not as abstract earth, air, water and fire but as the more earthy land, sea and sky (with the sacred fire at the center). There’s also a folk tradition — which I have learned is not accepted by most Celtic language scholars, but the folklore is still out there — that the Gaelic word for Skye, Sgitheanach, may be related to Norse words for “mist” or “cloud.” That, of course, brought to mind The Cloud of Unknowing.
The more I thought of it, the more Skye seemed to be the perfect name for me.
Sharing Skye
Nicknames are pointless if others won’t use them, so I faced a big question: would anyone else, starting with my wife, even accept it? After all, Fran and I had been married over 32 years at that point, so inviting her to switch up what she called me felt like a big ask. Feeling nervous about it, I shared with her what was going on in my heart. She listened and said she was open to the idea, so I gave her the list of the names I had put together. In reality, there was only one entry on the list that I was truly excited about, but I wanted to see if it spoke to her as well.
Fran went through the list carefully, and we discussed almost every item. Ironically, some of the ones that I did rather like, she didn’t care for at all — and vice versa. But when she finally came to Skye (the list was in alphabetical order), she stopped. “oh, I really like this one,” she declared simply and confidently. I told her that was, to my mind, the one as well. So we began using it just among ourselves.
Before long I simply loved this name, and felt excitement over inviting it into my life. But immediately I began to second-guess myself. Was this merely a fun little idea that occurred to me in Hawaii, almost like a vacation fling? Even if Skye still felt good after going back home, how was I going to use it when I have been publishing as Carl for so long now? I kept praying and pondering, and decided that the reasonable path to take would be to introduce it to my closest friends, to my spiritual director and therapist, and to be in discernment about it for six months. Fran and I were planning a vacation to England and Scotland in June, so that seemed to be another important step: to go to the Isle of Skye and see if the name still seemed to fit there.
I also decided that Skye was not meant to replace Carl. After all, it’s a new nickname. Just as C.S. Lewis preferred to be called Jack without ever renouncing his given name Clive (which apparently he hated), I decided I wanted to embrace Skye without rejecting Carl (which, frankly, I still think is a perfectly fine moniker).
So that’s what I have done. Little by little, more friends and associates were introduced to Skye, and nearly all reacted enthusiastically. The trip to Scotland was rich and lovely, and while I could only “ask” the island for permission to use the name in an intuitive, imaginal way, I felt that the answer was very much a “yes.” So I came home and proceeded to add “Skye” to my website and social media sites, and on June 21, 2026 — the Summer Solstice — I announced the name publicly online.
So that’s the story of how I came to be Skye.
One More Thing
The other question I get asked is, “which name should I use?”
I imagine many people, especially those who have known me for a while, may find it’s not easy to switch over to Skye — and that’s okay. Carl is not a dead name3 — it’s still my given name, given to me by parents I loved dearly. Here is what I’m telling people: “Skye is my preferred name, but Carl is okay to use. I am happy to be called Carl, and I love to be called Skye.”
Over time I have become more comfortable with the idea that nonbinary gender is widely seen as a type of transgender identity. Even so, as a nonbinary person the main reason I would say I am transgender is to clearly state that I am not cisgender.
Examples of men named Skye include professional athletes Skye Bolt (baseball), Skye Dawson (football), Skye Boyland (fitness coach), along with Skye VanderKuyl, who as of 2025 played football for Hope College in Michigan.
Some transgender and nonbinary persons find the name given to them at birth is a painful reminder of gender dysphoria, so when they adopt a new name they choose to completely forswear the old name. In this situation, the old name is seen as “dead” and it’s considered inconsiderate and unacceptable for people to keep using it.
I'm aboard, Skye!