Taking a Witch’s Name – How to Choose Your Magickal Name

This post is a rewrite of the Magickal Name article I first published in 2023, during a very different phase of my life. At the time, I was navigating religious trauma recovery, and the magickal name I chose then served that chapter well.

But a witch does not remain the same.

Witches die and are reborn many times before they die — each rebirth an initiation, each initiation calling forth a new name, or a deeper embodiment of one.

What I understood about naming then was true.
What I understand now goes further.

This rewrite was sparked by reading The Witch’s Name: Crafting Identities of Magical Power by Storm Faerywolf (click here for the full review). The exercises rooted in the Feri Tradition, in particular, helped me engage more consciously with the process of renaming — not as a one-time decision, but as an ongoing relationship with identity, power, and embodiment.

Why Witches Take a Magickal Name

Witches and other practitioners of magic(k) may choose to take a magickal name for many reasons — but beneath them all lies one central truth:

A magickal name is not merely descriptive. It is operative.

It shapes how you are seen, how you move, and what currents you align with. In that sense, choosing a name is less about self-expression and more about self-consecration.

Connection to the Craft

Taking a new name can mark a conscious step onto the path — a way of recognising that something within you has awakened and is ready to be lived more fully.

Click HERE for a Tarot spread that will help you connect to the magick of your name.

Symbolic Alignment

A magickal name often reflects the energies, deities, elements, or myths you are in relationship with. It becomes a point of resonance — a way of aligning your identity with the forces you work with.

There is real power in this. A name is a sound-form that carries intention. Every time it is spoken, it reinforces a pattern of being.

Empowerment and Reinvention

To name yourself is to step outside inherited definitions and choose your own. It is an empowering act of authorship.

Privacy and Boundaries

For some, a magickal name also serves as a boundary — a way to separate one’s Craft from everyday identity, or to maintain privacy in spaces where openness is not always safe.

Initiation

In many traditions, receiving or taking a new name is part of initiation. It marks a crossing — from one state of being into another.

It is not the name itself that initiates you; it is your willingness to become the one who can carry it.

Not every witch takes a magickal name, and there are no fixed rules. What matters is the relationship you have with the name, and whether it reflects the truth of who you are becoming.

How to Choose a Magickal Name

Choosing your witch’s name is less about finding something “perfect” and more about recognising what is already calling you.

Self-Reflection

Begin with honest reflection. What are you devoted to? What are you becoming?

Look at your path as it is, not as you think it should be.

Research and Resonance

Explore myth, folklore, nature, astrology, tarot, numerology, and the systems you already work with. Notice what draws you in — not intellectually, but viscerally.

Resonance is a better guide than logic here.

Symbolic Threads

Pay attention to recurring symbols in your life — animals, plants, archetypes, elements. These often point toward aspects of your deeper identity.

Intuition

At some point, the process shifts from searching to recognising.

A name may arise suddenly, or return repeatedly. When it does, notice how your body responds. Alignment is usually quiet but unmistakable.

Living With the Name

Try the name in your practice. Speak it. Write it. Sit with it.

A magickal name that fits soon starts feeling natural, even if at first you feel as if you’re faking it.

External Input (Optional)

If you work with guides, ancestors, or a tradition, you may choose to seek input there. Otherwise, external validation is not required.

Authority comes from inner alignment, not consensus.

Integration

Once chosen, the work is to embody the magickal name — to let it shape how you move, speak, and relate to your path.

The right name doesn’t feel like something you invented.
It feels like something that elevates you and expands your horizons.

On Outgrowing a Magickal Name

Some of us take more than one magickal name in a lifetime.

It doesn’t mean we’re inconsistent; it means we’re evolving.

A magickal name can be perfectly aligned for one chapter and no longer fit the next. When that happens, it does not mean you chose wrong. It means you listened well — and now you are listening again.

A Note on My Own Journey

The magickal name I chose in 2023 emerged during a time of recovery, reconstruction, and return to the Craft after a period of disconnection. It held exactly what I needed then.

Looking back, I can see that the process began earlier than I realised:

• A seed planted through guidance
• A descent into confusion and fragmentation
• A gradual return to clarity
• And eventually, the recognition that I had outgrown the identity I was carrying

These moments were not separate events. They were stages of initiation.

This time, the process of renaming has felt less like choosing, and more like uncovering something that had been forming beneath the surface for a long time.

The practices I engaged with through the Feri-based exercises helped bring that process into conscious awareness, but the movement itself was already underway.

Final Thoughts

Taking a magickal name is not about becoming someone else.

It is about becoming more fully who you are.

And if you find yourself standing at the threshold of a new magickal name, uncertain but called forward, that uncertainty is not a sign to stop.

It is a sign that something real is happening.

And that you are ready to meet it.

Lisa Eddy — Tanit Iris LeFay