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RobinHanson comments on My concerns about the term 'rationalist' - Less Wrong
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The main problem with "rationalist" is that instead of declaring one's goal, one seems to be claiming to have achieved a goal. To most people it seems arrogant. So I like "truth seeker" because it so clearly avoids that problem. Of course "truth seeker" also has the problem that it implicitly accuses everyone else of not seeking truth. Believe me, most people understand this slight and are not happy with it. So which insults other folks less - saying we love truth when they don't, or saying we are better at finding truth than they are?
Actually, a broader view of this seems useful. Any time we say "I am an X", the person you're talking to is likely to take it as you implying that they're not an X, unless they already identify as being an X as well. So any good-sounding X will come off as insulting. A bad-sounding but interesting X might be useful, but that seems prone to backfiring, and neutral values of X are both difficult to construct and not very stable.
Stating it as 'I do X' or even 'I do X well' seems more likely to be taken well - there's less of an intrinsic implication about whether the other person does X.