askchapo

just calling her Sarah and saying "she used to go by Sam" if there's confusion?

Please, please avoid doing that if you can — there are many, many other ways to clarify who you're talking about than using an old name. Try mentioning, say, a shared memory, or a distinctive trait about the person, and then say that she transitioned.

The important thing to keep in mind with this stuff is that anybody who knows somebody's deadname can use that deadname to disrespect or harass that person. So even if you may think you're using the deadname "innocuously" — whether that be because of an apparent "slip-up" or just because you figured it was OK to use the deadname "in that context" — every time you use the deadname, you're making that deadname more prominent in other people's memory, keeping it from getting forgotten, priming other people to "slip up" in turn, or even inadvertently teaching it to new people. And the more people who know someone's deadname, as said, the more people have the ability to use that knowledge for evil.

In other words, even if you aren't shooting the gun, you're still selling the bullets, right?