Oh wow...it hadn't occurred to me to use a fictitious name for myself with a T. But, on further thought, nah, it would be a serious cognitive overload to keep it up.

Current T asked as to who my former T was (at that point, I was still seeing her) -- I was a bit used to it by then because another T I'd interviewed had asked the same question. I deflected with current T and just said she's psychodynamic. She got back to it later and said that I needn't ever disclose her name if I didn't want to -- I appreciated that because when I'd told the other T I interviewed that I didn't want to disclose my former T's name, she got kinda pissy and asked why and said that was okay "for now".

A couple of sessions later though with current T, I ended up telling her former T's full name -- it was getting a little too awkward in conversation (since I was referring to my crap with her a lot) to not mention her name. Current T commented that it was "interesting" that I disclosed it.

As for names of people in my life -- my own name is non-Western and I'm used to it getting mangled (really doesn't bother me since I mangle others' names as well). Current T took a while to get my last name right in writing out her receipt etc -- she was uber sensitive though and apologized when she mangled it (my repeated reassurance that it didn't matter didn't seem to make a dent).

So, I don't mention names only because I don't want to overload her (or any T) with the names of significant relationships because it would be a whole lot of confusing non-Western names to remember.

At times, it gets a little complicated though because when I refer to my ex-es (all with non-Western names), I kind of end up saying "most recent ex", "the ex before the most recent ex", "the last ex before I came out", "my first girlfriend", "the ex with Y issue" and so on. Very awkward.

With former T, I gave her a bullet-pointed 5-min spiel of my dating record and left it at that after largely focusing on my most recent ex -- finally told former T her first name when it got too awkward to not mention it. She repeated it over the first few sessions when I mentioned it to make sure she got it right but that was it.

For family, I just refer to them by relationship -- does make it a little confusing to refer to different uncles and aunts (so, I say my Mom's youngest brother, the middle brother and so on) etc but thankfully, it doesn't come up too much.