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Esmeralda S. Whitammer
Questions about my name

Short guidelines

Please call me Esmeralda (she/they) by default.

Exceptions:

  • Citing papers published by me under my old name, if their latest version still uses it;
  • Clarifying to those who know me by my old name that I am the same person.

Questions and answers

Few people afford themselves the luxury of self-definition, and I am lucky to be one of them. Below are the answers to some common questions. Please ask if you have any others: it is better to ask than to avoid or to assume.

Such a page may seem unnecessary and self-indulgent, but when the product of one's labour is linked to a name, it should be made clear how that name is to be understood and used. Hence this bit of self-definition on a professional website.

Misunderstandings have led to humorous and awkward situations, as well as some undeserved yet unforgettable compliments, including someone calling me a “very famous amortised inference researcher” to my face.

Why?

Why did you change your first name?

I felt it better suits me and how I wish to be known. (Others happened to agree.)

Why did you change your surname?

I felt it better suits me and how I wish to be known. (Others happened to agree.)

When did you start using this name?

Gradually in all settings. In social contexts: from 26 July 2025. In private work contexts: from 31 December 2025. In publicly visible work contexts: from 22 April 2026. This webpage was first published on 16 May 2026.

I have seen/used a different version of your old name. It did not seem (male-)gendered to me. What was wrong with it?

The name I was assigned at an earlier stage of my life has a short form that did not seem male-gendered to some people. There is no remaining reason to use it, except perhaps for clarification in some cases.

Transitional states

What do you want me to call you?

Esmeralda for all purposes, outwith a very small number of contexts. This means “Esmeralda” if we are on first-name terms, “Dr Whitammer” if the situation calls for a title, and so on.

What are those few possible reasons to use your old name?

First, documents that use my old name in their latest version should continue to use it. At this point, this only applies to citing older papers and preprints.

Examples
  • The following citation is correct: “N. Malkin, Y. Bengio. Machine learning and information theory concepts towards an AI Mathematician. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 2024”. (It would be incorrect to use the new name here.)
  • The following citation is correct: “L.M. Bhamidipaty, E.S. Whitammer, D. Abel, M.J. Kochenderfer, S. Ramamoorthy. Imperfect world models are exploitable. Preprint, 2026”. (It would be incorrect to use the old name here.)
  • The following citation is also correct: “A. Carter, S. Choi, K. Tamogashev, V. Elvira, E.S. Whitammer. Discrete diffusion samplers and bridges: Off-policy algorithms and applications in latent spaces. ICML 2026”. (The first preprint version of this paper was published with a different name, but the latest preprint and the published version use the new one, so the latter is correct to use.)

Second, it may sometimes be needed to clarify that my old and new names refer to the same person in order to maintain recognition of my person and work. If someone uses my old name, you can point out that that person's name has changed and call me Esmeralda in the rest of the conversation; similarly, if you mention working with Esmeralda to someone who does not recognise my name, you can clarify that I was previously known by my old name. No need to overexplain or justify the change.

In the past, it was necessary to use my old name for some administrative and official purposes. Because I have legally changed my name in every relevant jurisdiction, this is no longer the case.

You may occasionally see my old name in a shrinking number of systems that have not caught up, but this is not sufficient reason to use it in communications or to refer to me.

Can I use your new first name with your old surname or vice versa?

No.

Other questions

How do you pronounce your name?

The first name: the way you'd expect in English, with secondary stress on the first syllable and primary stress on the third. (I say the first syllable as /ɛs/ rather than /ɛz/, but both are fine. There seems to be some dialectal/idiolectal variation in the pronunciation of the third (stressed) syllable; please use whatever sounds most natural to you.)

The surname: with primary stress on the first syllable and secondary stress on the second, meaning the ‘a’ is not reduced.

What's up with the surname?

To my knowledge, I am the only person to have borne the surname “Whitammer”, although it has a plausible etymology. One could say it is as unique as the person to whom it belongs, which is a nice property for denotations in general.

Can I shorten your name?

No, unless I've told you how.

What does the S stand for?

That's my wee secret!

What do I call you in other languages?

Please use the same name or phonetically reasonable approximations in all languages by default.