Naming your adopted child - Page 2

[rredhead]

We Chose

DS's bmom told us, "You'd better pick out a boy's name cause that's what you're having."
We chose Jackson for many reasons, and his middle name is DH's uncle who died the year we were adopting.
I already have a name chosen for a girl.
Jack's bmom wanted to give him our last name at birth, but the state wouldn't allow that, so he was our first and middle names and her last name for paperwork purposes only.
-Robyn

[Sierra]

Originally Posted by pumpkingirl71

This cracked me up. I don't use my kids real names on the internet either, so I completely understand. But I have no idea what you are talking about here. I just can't picutre it

It is something like, Regina to Gina, only the dropped letters are a softer sound than "Re" .

(Other examples, in case your mind is like mine and now it keeps running different names like this...Santina to Tina [although I guess that is three letters], Eleanor to Lenore [or however you would spell it once you drop the "El"], Vanessa to Nessa, Rebecca to Becca...)

[Sierra]

Originally Posted by mom4emnxani

We also got her a new social security number.

We're doing that for ds, and will do that for dfd as well if we have the chance to adopt her. With dfd, our reasons will be pretty similar to yours. With ds it was more advised practice (although once during a visit, ds' birthmother just left his original social security card lying around-- we were at the mall).

(I haven't changed it yet with ds because his adoption "birth" certificate has my birthdate wrong, and thus the certificate is not a correct copy. I haven't been able to *get* that changed because they want to see a copy of *my* birth certificate, which I seemed to have misplaced just after the adoption hearing. )

[fenwickmama]

we kept ds's name and added a middle name (he didn't have one). his name is very anglo and has meaning to our family so it just seemed meant to be (ds is from guatemala). we met him and foster mom at ds aged 4 mos but he didn't come home til 6 mo-she asked at the meeting if we were changing his name as she would start referring to him by new name but was very pleased we weren't.

[Starr]

When we got our referral, from Guatemala, DD had a first name, middle name, and two last names. I really wasn't keen on the first name, although now its becoming popular here in the US, but her middle name was also her birthmoms middle name. We asked who named her and no one knew for sure, sometimes atty name the childre. We chose an americanized first name Olivia and gave her the birthmoms middle name as well as my middle name. It worked out nicely since the fostermom had been calling her by her middle name which when pronounced sounded very close to Olivia.

I actually really liked the birthmoms name and thought about naming her after that but DH felt it might be too weird to have the exact same first and middle name as her birthmom.

[RedOakMomma]

Confused about the Korean family name...

We're adopting from Korea, but now I'm confused.

Do you think it would be "better" to put her family name in the name we give her?? I know family names are very important in Korea, but if we keep the family name I can't imagine dropping the given name. It's getting complicated, then, because we also want to give her a first name as well as a middle name that comes from both sides of our families.

So....

[American first name] [Korean last name] [Korean given name] [American middle name] [Our last name]

?

That's a mouthful!! It's sad, but I guess we'll have to think about dropping the traditional family name we were going to use for her middle name. We'll have to see how it all sounds, too. For us, it will be VERY important to preserve as much of her Korean name as possible, especially since she'll have been going by that name for a year or more when she joins us.

[BCFD]

We have 3 girls and have changed all of their names. Unfortunately, all 3 had birth names that we absolutely did not like.

With DD#1 who came to us at 6 weeks old through the fost/adopt system, nobody could tell us who named her. We later found out she was named by birthmom, but we still did not like her name. We actually considered birthmom's LAST name as her first name because it is such a freakin' cool name. We just thought it might be weird to do that, so decided against it. When we met birthmom, she seemed a little shocked that we had changed it, but we explained to her that nobody knew who named her and we did not feel comfortable keeping this name for that reason. She understood.

DD#2 came to us through fost/adopt, as well, with a name that was in the top 5 SSA names and we just could not stand it. We decided against keeping it as a middle name, too. Birthmom was a little disappointed about that, but she also understood.

DD#3 is DD#1's bio-sis and we actually contemplated keeping her first name as one of her mn's, but the name is just horrible. So, we decided against it once again. However, we also considered birthmom's last name for her, but still came to the same conclusion that it might be kinda weird in the long run.

Until the adoptions were/are complete all the doctors called them by their birth names, but none of our friends and family members did. It was very strange in the ped's office, let me tell you. We'd always call them by their name that we chose for them and that would always confuse the docs, so we had to explain that even though their legal/birth name was being used for office visits, we have never called them by those names.

We gave all our girls 2 mn's and really would have loved to keep a part of their birth names in their names, but they were just all HORRIBLE names that I could not have lived with.

Alicia, I love your son's name and had always suggested it to DP as a name, but she poo-poo'd it. Grrr.... anyway...I think it's beautiful.

[queencarr]

RedOakMomma, that is hard! First, I would find out from your agency if they keep the birthmother's name as the child's name. I don't know that all agencies do that, but I know that HoltKorea does, unless the name is so unusual as to be easily identifiable. But yes, in Korean society that would be your child's history and what connects her to her family. The individual name is not nearly as important. If your child's family name is "made up", then it would not be as important culturally to keep it. Here's what I have seen several families do when they kept their child's whole Korean name:

[American 1st name] [Korean first and middle together-space-Korean family name] [American last name]

Although Korean names are written family name, given name, they are said given name, family name. So these families chose to do that to avoid confusion.

So, could you do [American first and possibly middle name] [Korean first and middle name-space-Korean family name] [American lastname]


It is still lengthy, but "fits" better somehow. I did something similar when I got married: My name was [Carrie] [Jean] [maiden name]. So my legal name now is [Carrie Jean] [maiden name] [married name]. It works really easily. I still just go by Carrie, but it fits in all the standard 3 blanks on forms that way and I didn't give up any of them. If my examples are confusing, PM me, and I will give you the specifics of how it would work for our family's names.

[Sarahbunny]

We named her first name, middle name, original first name as middle name.

So, using an example - Jane Jean Jeanette, then Jane Jean was our choice and Jeanette was the first name her birthmother gave her. Obviously, that isn't her actual name. Just an example.

Now, we had a souvenir bc and stuff from the hospital that had our choice on it, and while her insurance card does say her REAL name right now (finalizing next month with the name change), our dr's office knows to call her M, which is what we named her. There is a big old note on her file there plus a note in the computer.

I liked the name that "C" gave her, but I didn't like where she got it from.

[Tigeresse]

We did as many others do, gave dd a new anglo 1st name and kept her orphange-given generational and 1st name as her middle name. My only regret in retrospect is that her Chinese name is somewhat difficult to pronounce in English. If she ever wanted to use it, it would be quite butchered, I'm sure. However, it is the name she had in China and we very much wanted to keep it for her.