She captured our hearts from the moment we first looked at her photo in the referral packet. From that second, she was ours. And the very first thing we did? Before we even held her? We named her. This precious child, who already had a name, given at birth by the woman who carried her inside of her for 9 months. She had earned the right to name her. I assumed I had, too.
There was nothing wrong with her birth name. Andrea is a perfectly fine name. But it wasn’t a name we chose. She was ours now. We were claiming her. And we were naming her.
And then a few years later, looking at the photo of the infant who would become her sister, we did it again. Catherine is also a nice name. But, no thanks, we’ve got our own name picked out.
Scripture recounts several instances where someone goes through a name change. In Genesis 13, God changed Abram to Abraham and Sarai to Sarah; four chapters later he changed Jacob to Israel. Jesus renamed Simon, Peter and John, the brother of James, got the new name Boanerges. (Thankfully, it translated to a cool nickname, Sons of Thunder.) King Nebuchadnezzar’s official renamed the Israelite Daniel and his friends, Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 1). In each instance, the renaming signified ownership, a repurposing of the individual, a setting apart.
It’s no different when we rename our adopted children. We have a right. We are claiming them, we are setting them apart as a member of our family. We are repurposing their life (or at least we like to think we are). As a parent, it makes sense.
But then that sweet infant becomes a teen and this happens:
“When I turn 18 I’m changing my name to Catherine,” declares Daughter #2.
You are, huh?
“Yes. I’m changing it back to what my birthmother called me.”
I nod silently.
I’m not surprised by her statement. I’m not angry. I’m not hurt. I’m not threatened. I understand her consuming desire to connect with her birth mom. We don’t know much about this woman and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever meet her. But we do have my daughter’s birth certificate from Guatemala and on that is her birth name. That name, and a fuzzy old photo, are her only connections to her birth mother. And we took half of it away. If she wants it back, I’m OK with that.
If I understood then, what I understand now, I would have kept my daughters’ birth names—or at the very least tried to incorporate them more into their adopted names. I would have done it out of respect for their birth mothers, and as a future source of comfort for my daughters. But I was too proud, and too insecure as a new mother.
It’s interesting that in Acts 13, we learn that Saul of Tarsus “was also called Paul.” In the first half of the book of Acts, Luke refers to him as Saul; from chapter 13 on, he’s Paul.* It was fairly common for 1st century Jews to have more than one name. Why not our adopted children?
What about you? Did you change your child’s name at adoption? Did you retain any part of his or her birth name? If given the chance, would you make the same choice?
*If you want to dig deeper, Doug Ward offers an interesting discussion of Why Luke shifts from Saul to Paul in Acts 13.
We renamed both or sons to bring them closer to their forever families. First name from my side of the family, first middle name from husband’s side, then second middle name their name given in Guatemala. Our thought was they are then included in all their families and they may chose to use any of those names they wish whenever.
How wonderful, Melanie. What a gift you’ve given them–the gift of choice. Love it. Thanks for sharing.
Kept the two of her birth names; gave her a new middle name and a new last name
This is beautifully written. It makes me grateful that we made the decision to keep his given name as his middle name. And we find that we call him by his given name as much as by his first name. 🙂
Thank you for sharing. My son is 11, and I am reading these blog posts in anticipation of what may come.
Thank you for reading. We carried over a middle name. Wish we had done more.
I should add that my very wise social worker told me: Their name is one of the only things they bring with them from their birthmothers. AND I have never worked with an older adoptee who didn’t ask what her original name way.
I wish we were given the same advice. Our girls have long known their birth names, but now that they’re teens it’s become more important to them.
We adopted our son when he was 7 years old and kept his first and middle names the same. He appreciates that. He had been called by them for 7 years and there were no safety concerns or other reasons for us to change them.
That’s wonderful, Lynette. Thanks for sharing.
I chose my son’s birthmom’s last 2 Guatemalan names as his first and middle name. It just felt right. 😊
Awesome, Jen! Thanks for sharing.
We made our sons first birth name his middle name and gave him a new first name. That name has been shorten to a nick name. If he chooses later in life to be called by his middle name we’d be fine with that too. We thought it was important to show that we had respect for his birth mother by keeping some part of his original name. We did not do any of that for our daughter from China because we were told the orphanage named her and the last name came from the city she was born in. She unfortunately will never kniw anything about her birth patents as she was abandoned.
Thank you for sharing, Leslie. Abandonment leaves so many wounds.
We worked through our host country´s adoption system to adopt our daughter from China so the status sheet we received with her limited history was in spanish, and the translation of her name was Redondo, which we translated into our native english as ¨round one¨. This made sense to us as the single picture we were sent also showed a little chubby round kid (later we discovered that it may have been the common coat that they put on for all the kids at that orphage when it was picture time because she wasn´t chubby in the least underneath that orange coat). So we certainly didn´t want our child to have a Little Fat One complex so we had no qualms about changing her name. At the time we received the long awaited news that we could go get her, my brother passed away so it was fitting to honor him and name our daughter with a dirivative of his name, which in our hearts and minds, connected her to her adopted extended family in a way. The name clicked and even sounds quite chinese when spoken in spanish! We didn´t even consider keeping ¨Little fat round one¨ nor her last name as we learned that the children often are given the last name according to the orphanage´s director´s name or the city where the orphanage is located. No ties there. So all paper work was finished, new name, new passport, and we were on the airplane back to our home and got into a discussion with a chinese gentleman. His gave us the first hand translation as compared to ¨the lost in translation¨ version, and her name actually meant ¨Like a Full Circle, Perfection¨. Too late!
What an amazing story, Carolyn! And one that your daughter will hopefully be able to share and laugh about her whole life.
Beautifully written. We incorporated birth country given names into the middle names. But then I learned that it was not uncommon in Guatemala for others to give the baby a birth country name – sometimes the intermediary, sometimes the Guatemalan attorney, sometimes even the foster parents. Depends on the situation, who took the child from the birthmother and when, etc. So I’m kind of glad we didn’t keep birth country names, because we don’t even know if they came from the birth mother anyway. It would be sad to hold onto something only to find out later that it was false.
T, you’re one of several readers who have commented about Guatemalan children being named by an intermediary. I was not aware. In our case, we do know that the birth mothers gave our daughters their names. For our second child, we kept her birth middle name as her middle name. But for our oldest, we changed both her names, her first name to reflect our preference and her middle name she shares with me and my deceased mother.