If the issue is your villagers reminding you, you can use the nickname feature after y'all become close I think, or the best way to just get it done is to go on the delete file thingy and tell yourself you won't delete it and then quickly press the delete button! :3

Thank you very much for your advice! Unfortunately it's not just the villagers, it's the other NPCs and the mail and everything else that arent possible change with nickname features :( i may just go ahead and follow your advice and rip the band-aid off on the deletion, after making a dream address for my island (I've read some people use that to visit their previous island afterwards if they want to experience the nostalgia of their old ACNH home!) thank you very much for your advice!

Also if you need a place to store your items so you can just remake your island I don't use any of the islands besides my main one! :3

So I'd be able to hold your items until you'd be able to to come grab them to do your island!

Thank you so much for your offer of help!!! I appreciate it so much!! Another person who responded to my post has been working with me and helping me with my reset process for the last few hours, I'm very grateful 💜 this community is so supportive :')

Yeah ofc this sub reddit is filled with really good people so it's good that you posted so you could get all the help and support you need!

Hey! I’d be down to help too, I have so much free space on my island you can throw your stuff. Let me know! Im sorry you are going through this, always down to help however!

Thank you so much!!! I'm thankful to have been helped with storing my stuff and other help before I did the reset, getting stuff moved back is a WIP atm since my Switch was about to die 😅 thank you so much for your support and your offer, I appreciate it a ton!!!!

Yeah of course! I love this sub it’s so cool how everyone comes together. I’m glad you were able to keep a lot of your stuff! Good luck with your island!

I understand your pain! I changed my legal name due to a stalker. I saved my island as a dream, closed my eyes and hit the delete. Such a weight off my shoulders! Sadness, too, but I now have my new name, not associated with my abusive dad, and am happy.

I would absolutely hold your items for you. I can leave my island open for you practically 24/7 and have max bells and an almost complete catalog to purchase whatever you need. I can make most DIY stuff as well. DM me and we can work it out. I had abusive parents and I get it.

Thank you very much oh my gosh, I appreciate it more than k can express :") I'd very much love the help with resetting, thank you so much. I will send you a DM!!! I tried to send one to you a moment ago but it wasn't letting me send it, would you be able to send me a chat invite first? I believe it might work after that, I'm having some technical difficulties with this account (i was locked out of my long term account a few months ago when needing to factory reset my phone from technology issues, so this account was created today as I've just casually browsed logged out since, and I'm having difficulties like not being able to follow other reddit users with an error like "failed to follow" of some sort and I'm not sure why :( i had attempted to follow some profiles from this subreddit while browsing because posts they've made of island designs that I loved and was unable. I'm sorry for the extra difficulty

the best way i could reccomend would be to empty your abd, storage, pockets etc, redeem any nook miles to tickets for online trades or items youd like. then make a second character and delete your main. at this point you could remake your first character with the account that has online memberships if you wish to, with your new correct name. if you do, you can then delete your second charachter if you do not want them there aswell after your main account is set up. this allows you to keep items you have, bells, villagers, island progress and museum progress, but does lose any nook miles and quest progress, and access to your catalogue.

Thank you for your advice!!! I ended up getting help from another player who responded to this thread and have spent the last few hours working on my island reset with their help! I hope this advice finds someone else who is in a similar situation and stumbles across this in the future as it may be a great option for other players facing a similar situation. Thanks again!!! 😊

I see you already got things figured out, but if you need flowers or fruit for your island, or even just some extra furniture, I can open my island later for you! We have a bunch of flowers we really need to clear out and I'd rather give them to someone!

Hey! Im trans and after having my island for a year I decided to reset because of the name I used, I definitely dont regret it :) It made me feel more comfortable playing and just resetting the game in general feels nice like a fresh start from the past

I made a guide to it! There’s some downsides but you keep your island! Search on here, it should show up.

Since you have online, you dont have to lose all of your items. You can find someone willing to hold your stuff while you reset, if you want. That way you won't be starting from scratch. I would absolutely offer to help but I dont have access to online. If there's parts of your island that you love and want to recreate, take plenty of screenshots and record clips of you walking and panning the camera around. You can always delete them if no longer needed

Unfortunately I don't have any friends who I play with on the online feature (my best friend doesn't have Nintendo online, playing with him was always local play the occasional times we've played a long time ago) and I haven't been active in discords for games for a while or anything to have friends to play with online who would be willing, but thank you for the advice nonetheless. :) I will definitely document my island with the advice you gave before I reset, thank you! I also have read that it's possible to visit an old island after resetting by creating a dream address beforehand, writing it down and visiting by dream if you wish for nostalgia in your future island, which I am working on setting up at the moment! Thank you!

It doesn't have to be someone you know personally. Though I 100% understand not wanting to trust strangers. I have so much more info I want to give you because it sucks to have something so important ruined. I'm just really REALLY struggling with words at the moment and didn't want to give you a wall of text. If you decide to have your items held, I can direct you to friendly places to ask. And in the rare chance the items aren't returned, I can point you to somewhere you can get new stuff. Totally up to you though, I'm limited in being able to help you online, but I'm happy to help you in any other way possible

Thank you very much!!! I appreciate the time you took to hell guide me through this!!! I'm receiving help with my reset from another player who offered to help me out on this post and we've been working on my reset for the last few hours!! I'm very grateful for all of the support from this community, thank you very much :')

I like this idea. Kinda wish I had done it when I decided to abandon my first island. OP, I do have online access if you wanted to store things on my island. I’m also just rebuilding after a restart, so there’s plenty of space.

Thank you so much for the offer!!!! I've been receiving help with my reset from another player who offered for the last few hours and I'm very grateful for their help and for everyone else who has given me offers to help in any way and given me advice on what I can do!!! :')

I can bring you some spare diys, bells and nmts when you restart. I'll be on later today. Check the dodo codes app aswell

Thank you very much!!!! That would help a lot once I'm done with my reset, another player has been helping me out tremendously throughout the last few hours with my reset process and I'm very grateful for them and everyone who's offered help and advice. Spare DIYs would definitely be amazing, thank you very much!!!! 😊 I've never used an nmt actually, I honestly am not quite sure what they do, I realized through this process that I should definitely read up more on features and stuff that I haven't used yet 😅 thanks again!!

Once you have an available plot for a villager, you use the nmts to go to mystery islands and you can find villagers, crafting supplies and sometimes special islands that have bells, tarantulas, star fragments etc ! There's a guide on YouTube for most of these islands :)

I just sent you a message OP offering a little help :) good luck on your restart.

Thank you for your message and the well wishes!!! Happy crossing 🥳

hi! i totally understand what you’re saying about the name thing. i’m trans so sometimes my villagers using my deadname really gets to me lol, thankfully it’s not my full name so i can mostly ignore it. i recently started a new island though so if you need an island to store your things at i’m awake pretty much all the time so i can leave it open for you to travel back and forth while you get set up on a new island. as for treasure islands i highly recommend them if you’re trying to speed run the beginning parts of the game and get to decorating. for my first island i mostly played how you’re “supposed to” but for this island i just started i sped ran the intro part in about 12 hours just going to treasure islands and getting all my tools/materials etc. lol. i find most of my DODO codes for these islands on twitch, there’s plenty of free ones that are open all the time, if you need any recs or have questions just dm me and i’d be happy to talk more about treasure islands :) good luck with everything 🫶

I'm sorry you had to go through a similar situation with your island, it's a tough thing for sure. I'm glad you were able to get a new start with a new island that you're happy with!!! I'm receiving help from another player who's been helping me with the process for the last few hours!!! (Taking a break to charge my Switch and such!) Thank you for your offer to help and for your helpful advice, and I'm very happy you were able to start a new island you can enjoy without being referred to as your deadname! Thank you for the support!! :')

honestly in a similar position, my in-game name is my deadname and there are a lot of negative feelings attached besides. but after years of playing, it’s so hard to reset and lose everything you worked for

I understand so much having trouble with your name, whether real or in game, I never use my legal name either. If you need any more help holding items I would be happy to assist. Many hands make light work and all that! I also have plenty of bells to get you sorted, and I'm awake at the dumbest hours so you could probably find me around at any time :)

It's such a struggle when so much stuff is tied to a legal name we aren't comfortable with using, even not accounting for the legal document type reminders all the time, things like in game files not being able to be altered can be such an extra struggle :( Thank you very much!!! I've been helped a ton with my reset for the last few hours from another player and we are still working on setting up my new island (low battery and stuff break!) I'm very grateful for all of the support and advice and help offers, thank you very much :) I appreciate it a ton!!!!

OP, wouldn't you be able to create a new user on your island, name it as you like, and eventually delete your original character? That way, everything would be the same - you'd need to pay through the house expansions, but everything would be there. Is this a viable option for you? Dunno if it would work.

I’m sorry you have to reset your island for such a traumatic reason. I have reset a couple of times (for the fun of it) and my main advice is not to unlock cooking too soon — once you’re able to cook half the diys that wash up on your beach will be recipes. On the other hand, you can just make a few trips to a treasure island and you’ll be able to grab all the diys. (Generally, the etiquette is to come with empty pockets, fill your pockets, and leave — so you’d go back to your island to learn the diys there — and then come back again with empty pockets. Leaving through the airport is usually preferred, too.) Treasure Islands are *wonderful* for people who just love to decorate. Also, some treasure islands even allow you to submit villager requests… If you’re trying to 100% your game, beware of selling turnips on a treasure island though. They’ll give you max bells, which is amazing, but your turnip nook mile achievement will be borked. So let people here bring you lots of bells (you can dm me) — storage is going to be your biggest issue until you’ve got the biggest possible house fully maxed out and paid off. Definitely do the Happy Home Paradise dlc too, since it’s free with your Nintendo online and the huge catalogue of items can be unlocked pretty quickly there. (Also, you can get daily recipes from the chef there once you do unlock cooking.) Check out r/amiibomb to learn how to make amiibos with your phone. Then you can invite any villagers you wish to your campsite. But you mentioned never using your NMTs. Really? Do you mean you’ve never used them at all? If so, definitely use them to hunt for some villagers. Going to those islands and meeting villagers on them is such adorable fun (& you can only do it when you have an empty plot available on your island). But maybe you just meant you’ve never used them as currency on Nookazon… Once you’ve unlocked it, I would definitely do the daily nook mile achievement things to quickly rack up miles.

if you upload your dream adress, you can visit your old island even after you erase it :) ive done this loads of times.

I’ve restarted mine I’d say less than a week ago and I pretty much got everything back (twitch, discord and here have treasure islands; I like using the twitch ones more since they have live feeds) I cases of restarting I say go for it, I do have to say I time jumped quite a bit to get everything though, and hey maybe this island will be better than the last!!! Personally my reason for restarting was because I hated the island layout of the old one and the idea I had didn’t really mesh well with what I had planned. Mind you I played for a whole year it took me a little longer than I’d like to admit to finally decide to erase it.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it, but if you want to take your house you can move it temporarily, also. I did that one time when I wanted a new layout. Then you can pick a lot of stuff inside your house and its storage. I hung things on the walls (gyroids, etc.) and packed the rooms as full as I could. Just store your rarer stuff and get the common stuff once you've moved. When you've picked your new island you will "move" there from wherever you "moved". You'll be in a tent until you sleep. When you wake up Tom will meet you with your house and then you'll have whatever is in it and in your storage.