@Willow
Well Claire, my first name, was not so poignant a story. Deadname begins with C. My best friends since college call me C as a nickname. I wanted to keep going by that, so I went through women's names that start with C and Claire, or Clara, was the first that I liked.
My middle name was a longer story. Two of my daughters have the middle name Rose. I liked the names Clara Rose together. I even put that as my name on Reddit for a while. I asked them if they were OK with me using Rose. They were OK, but one of them told me they didn't really like it for reasons which I got. I needed to find a new name.
I really struggled to find a new name. I finally remembered being obsessed with the name Allison when I was going through puberty. The Elvis Costello song mainly. I also remembered fantasizing about being a girl named Allison.
I considered that maybe I should make Allison my first name. But by that point everyone was calling me Claire and I do love that as my first name. I figured I can always go by my middle name later if I wanted. So Claire Allison -- became my legal name.
One final part of the story... When I told my ex-wife that I chose Allison. She got mad at me. She reminded me that when we were trying to choose a name for our oldest daughter, she wanted the name Allison. I made a hard NFW on that, but I wouldn't tell her why. When I told her "obviously, because that's my name" she got it and stopped being mad.