It's always going to be confusing but I believe "transgender woman" is unambiguously someone assigned male gender at birth who identifies as a woman.
2. It is really up to the person.
At birth, nobody is "assigning" genders to you, they are attempting to observe your sex from primary sex characteristics. If they see vulva, they are observing a female; if they see penis/scrotum, they are observing a male.
While there are edge cases, it is generally pretty simple.
"Convincing a professional" is a reasonable proxy for biological sex, given that the cases that would fool a medical professional are in many (most?) cases sufficiently ambiguous that a reasonable person could take either side for what the biological sex is.