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Thursday, September 18, 2008

What's In A Name...

In adopting thru Foster Care, one of the down sides is that your child comes with a name. Starting at 6 months a child knows their name. But what if it's a bad name with your last name, the child is old enough to know their name, but too young to understand their name being changed...what do you do? Pray that the name grows on you? Allow the child to keep this part of their old identity, the one thing birth mom did for them, that will last forever? Or bunker down and change the name...gradually of course. Slowly over a year, starting out by using it as a nick name, and choosing a name that is close but not exact...something you like, something you can live with and a name that will go well with your last name...We aren't sure what to do, if we adopt this child, who is older than 6 mos and too young to understand a name change, but we dislike her given name...how do you decide? What are the big battles and what's not worth the hastle? What is traumatizing the baby for no good reason? I know how I would feel about changing the name of a friends child, but I'm just not sure how I feel about it. I'm confused and my DH wants to change the name...

6 comments:

Sarah said...

Tough one. Maybe keep her name, but call her by a nickname. A lot of people have one name but go by a totally different one. So, you both could have it your way. She can keep her original identity and you guys can in a way give her a new one. I'm just throwing out an idea, it is a tough one.

Erin said...
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my life: said...

By any chance...did you e-mail me about this??? Either way...I do want to touch on one thing you mentioned (I was hung up on this at one point as well)....her birth mother gave her life! That is way bigger than a name...you are honoring those parents by loving their child....does that make sense?
I hope you find rest in your decision...I will say, it took me a LONG time to get there...when we met with the attorney...all the paper work said we were keeping her name...in the final moment I changed it...I have NOT regretted that decision.
good luck.

Marthavmuffin said...

We thought about it fleetingly as I wasn't sure I liked the name Jamie, but after we had her in our home and called her by name for over a year she was Jamie and there was no more discussion about changing her first name. We did change her middle name.

Mama_x3 said...

I would change her first name, if only for safety reasons. You can switch her current first name to her middle name, and pick a new first name to go with her new last name. There are tons of opinions on both sides of this issue... I know that I would not have a problem changing a child's name.

Anonymous said...

Our good friend has adopted 4 children, and has changed all 4 of their names. Seeing as two of them were given names by their birth mother that were references to the drug of her choice, and another was given the middle name "Fillup" (that's how the birth mother thought it was commonly spelled), it was probably a good idea! They are all well-adjusted, happy children! We are adopting a little boy from foster care right now and his first name just doesn't sound right with our name (it also rhymes with his curren last name). We have decided to keep his first name as a middle name. Good luck! It's a tough decision. : )