Basic Trope: Someone pretends to be the opposite gender or changes gender and goes by a name similar to their given name.
- Straight: When Alice pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver, she uses "Alex" as her alias.
- Exaggerated: Alice is a transgender man who kept his birth name.
- Downplayed: She chooses to go by "Adrian", which, despite having the same first letter, isn't that similar to "Alice".
- Justified:
- She wanted to choose a name that's close to hers but a guy's name so it'd be easy to remember.
- She hadn't planned on having to pull a Sweet Polly Oliver, and needed to come up with an alias on the spur of the moment.
- It's what her parents had chosen for her if she had been born a boy. note
- Inverted: ???
- Subverted: She considers going by Albert, but then decides to go by Bob instead.
- Double Subverted: But when she discovers that one of the people she has to be in disguise around is already named Bob, she goes back to Albert to avoid confusion.
- Parodied: Alice goes on a website called Names-similar-to-your-name-but-the-opposite-gender.com to pick a name.
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't pull a Sweet Polly Oliver.
- Alice goes by "Bob" when she's pretending to be a man.
- Alice still calls herself Alice when she's claiming to be a guy, she just claims to have a Gender-Blender Name.
- Zigzagged: Alice considers several guy's names, a few of which sound like her name and a few of which don't.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Albert...that sounds a lot like Alice."
- Invoked: Alice wants the world to know that despite her changed identity, "Albert" is still her inside.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice refuses to use a male alias similar to her own name.
- Discussed: "You'd better have a name similar to your own, so it's easier to remember, but you're pretending to be a guy, so you can't call yourself Alice...how about Albert?"
- Conversed: "How come these characters always pick names similar to their own when they pretend to be the opposite gender or change gender?"
- Implied: Alice disappears, and a guy that looks remarkably like her named Albert shows up.
- Deconstructed:
- Someone inevitably figures out that "Albert" is Alice and catches her in the act. If Albert is trans, he faces transphobic hate comments due to the name.
- Alex is a transgender man who's uncomfortable with his new name because it's too close to his deadname of Alice.
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: ???
- Played for Drama: ???
Back to Sobriquet Sex Switch.
