‘Jeopardy!’ Icon Amy Schneider Fires Back at Trolls Still Using Her Birth Name

Amy Schneider on Jeopardy! Masters
Disney/Eric McCandless

Jeopardy! superstar Amy Schneider is paying no mind to cruel strangers who call her by her male name from before her transition when they see her in public.

On Thursday (November 15), the 40-day champion and 2022 Tournament of Champions winner took to X to reflect on times she’s been “deadnamed.” Dead-naming is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name.

“It’s funny to me when people try to deadname me by calling me ‘Thomas’, a name that I never went by,” she wrote. “I was Tommy, then Tom, and now Amy. Get your facts straight, intrusive weirdos!”

 

Fans flooded the comments section, loving Schneider’s humorous retort about her name having never been Thomas in her eyes and how she made light of the unthinkable situation by turning it into a piece of trivia.

“I’d rather just call you the GOAT,” one fan commented.

“Something about this is so funny to me. “If you’re gonna deadname me, do it right a**holes” is just the right attitude to have in this climate,” wrote another.

“So sorry you have to deal with that. Humans can be the worst! You have a lot of people behind you, though!” wrote a third.

“Your name is Amy period. Genius works too but it’s not your name,” wrote a fourth.

“One thing is for sure Amy, they are never going to beat you in a game of wits,” wrote a fifth.

“If they are willing to stoop to that level of mindless condescension towards someone they don’t even know, it seems like they truly do regard you as a woman after all,” wrote one more.

Schneider, 45, was born under her original name in Dayton, Ohio in 1979. In 2021, she would, of course, become the winningest female contestant ever ($1.3 million). Last year, Schneider released her first memoir, In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life. The tell-all got into unflinching detail about her personal life, including a largely unknown first marriage while still male.