Naming

sw_in_kc

We got the call on Wednesday and couldn't be more excited to welcome a baby girl due February 11. We got to meet BM and her parents for dinner last night with our social workers, and everything went great!

BM asked if she could help with naming the baby. DH and I have had names picked out since we started TTC 2.5 years ago. All the names we have picked are a name we have chosen plus a family name. I do like the name BM offered up, which is her grandmother's name. DH and I talked about two middle names, which I'm not a big fan of, but I would do for this BM.

I know other ladies on this board have come across the same situation and I'm wondering about the order of the names. Did you make the name the BM requests the third name, or the second name?

Thanks ladies!

katiejo11

our BM wanted input on the naming process, we had one all picked out but she wasn't huge on it so we agreeed on Grayden the week before he was born. I'm so glad she was a part of the decision!

come*on*baby

MrsB2007's BM's one of 2 requests was the baby have her middle name as apart of her name. Miss P has 2 middle names. Also, both my boys have 2 middle names. While they're adopted through foster care and BM had no say in what we changed their names to, we kept apart of their birth names as their second middle names. And my brother has 2 middle names, which is a tradition in my family for the boys. 

smash_effect

We had a first and middle named picked out through years of fertility treatments. Our son's birthparents had already picked a name so we decided to drop our pick for a middle name and honor their pick. Their choice is never a name I would pick for a middle name, it's just the meaning behind it that counts. Just our experience- good luck with what you decide.

sw_in_kc

Thanks for your input.

We do like the name she picked for a middle name, we're just trying to figure out how to make it work.

kmkaull2

The name was really important to our birth mom . ..  kind of a deal breaker.  It was a little tough to swallow at first, but we ended up working out a name (Quinn) that we all loved.  Her for family significance, us for our Irish heritage.  We selected his middle name.  I think she felt a name was the one lifelong gift she could give to him.  In the end, I was really happy we worked with her on it.  Pretty special for him.

jehnm

I'm so glad to hear the meeting went well!  I didn't realize that BMs are so involved in choosing a name very often.  We are pretty set on our girls name for very meaningful reason so we'd probably have to try to compromise by doing two middle names.  If it's a boy though, we'd probably try to combine the choices into first and one middle since we aren't too set there.  I have cousins with two middle names and it works fine for them! 

Congrats and keep me posted!

swanck

Oh this part makes me nervous.

Naming is so important to me...and DH and I really want to name the child ourselves.  And I'm afraid the BM will make it a deal breaker.

I'm sure it will all work out when we finally meet that family.  And it will probably mean more to me, when I know the BM, to have worked it out together.

 

But now it's so foreign to me that it makes me nervous. 

farmweddinggirl

swanck:

Oh this part makes me nervous.

Naming is so important to me...and DH and I really want to name the child ourselves.  And I'm afraid the BM will make it a deal breaker.

I feel the same way!  I love, love, love names.  If there were a job that just involved giving people names, I would make it my profession. ; )  So the thought of not getting to name my babies gives me a lot of anxiety.  I've worried about this a lot in regard to how it will play out in our adoptions.  

kmkaull2

swanck:

Oh this part makes me nervous.

Naming is so important to me...and DH and I really want to name the child ourselves.  And I'm afraid the BM will make it a deal breaker.

I'm sure it will all work out when we finally meet that family.  And it will probably mean more to me, when I know the BM, to have worked it out together.

 

But now it's so foreign to me that it makes me nervous. 

All I can tell you is to keep an open mind.  When we saw how much it meant to Quinn's birth mom, it really helped us let go of the naming thing.  She was wonderful and very mature about the way she presented it to us. 

Having said that, our case is probably extreme and rare.  It just happened to be a big deal in our situation.   More than not, I have heard of adoptive parents using birth mom's choice as a middle name or changing the name she puts on the first birth certificate.

Art Teacher

In our case, dd's birthmom asked us what names we liked.  We told her.  She said she liked one more than the others (and it happened to be our favorite, too.)  She suggested using her middle name as the baby's middle name if it were a girl...she didn't know what she was having then.  We loved that idea because her middle name is also her mom's middle name, so our daughter's middle name has a lot of significance. 

When dd was born, though, she gave her a different first name and the same middle name.  She knew we planned to change the name and was okay with it, but she wanted to give her a name. 

I had a lot of trouble with not being sure if we should name Zoe "Zoe" or go with the name her birthmom had given her.  I felt very torn.  We even discussed it with her birthmom's caseworker -- I didn't want to hurt her birthmom in any way if we still went with our name.  She said no, that the birthmom understood and it was okay. 

We like our daughter's name so much because the "Z" honors her birthmom and so does her middle name. 

I think every situation is different and you just have to go with it.  I LOVE names, too (I drove DH crazy with trying to think of lists and lists of names....I have trouble narrowing them down!) and I was so sure that I would definitely want to have all the input into choosing.   But in the end, you have to consider that particular situation and since the middle name was really important to her birthmom, we kept that.

swanck

kmkaull2:

swanck:

Oh this part makes me nervous.

Naming is so important to me...and DH and I really want to name the child ourselves.  And I'm afraid the BM will make it a deal breaker.

I'm sure it will all work out when we finally meet that family.  And it will probably mean more to me, when I know the BM, to have worked it out together.

 

But now it's so foreign to me that it makes me nervous. 

All I can tell you is to keep an open mind.  When we saw how much it meant to Quinn's birth mom, it really helped us let go of the naming thing.  She was wonderful and very mature about the way she presented it to us. 

Having said that, our case is probably extreme and rare.  It just happened to be a big deal in our situation.   More than not, I have heard of adoptive parents using birth mom's choice as a middle name or changing the name she puts on the first birth certificate.

 

That's what I'm wondering...and I think you're right.

I think when it becomes more personal, and there's a life, and a family that it will probably work out better than it is in my mind right now.

In fact, I'm having a hard time thinking names at all, because it seems so distant and isn't about naming a specific child yet.

I hope when we are matched and have a meeting  with a family that it will calm some of these nerves. 

HannaB

We ended up changing our idea about this once there was a baby. It was also something I was very nervous about, because I also love baby names and could talk about them all the live long.

Our son's BM never not once suggested we keep the name she gave him at birth, but when we heard it, it just made sense to keep it and it's now his middle name. It worked out that it's a name that is also biblical AND on my side and my husband's side, but it was NEVER on the table for us as a middle or first ever.

But once I heard that is what she'd named him ... it just made sense. And I know it meant a lot to his BM that we kept it totally of our own accord.

swanck

HannaB:

We ended up changing our idea about this once there was a baby. It was also something I was very nervous about, because I also love baby names and could talk about them all the live long.

Our son's BM never not once suggested we keep the name she gave him at birth, but when we heard it, it just made sense to keep it and it's now his middle name. It worked out that it's a name that is also biblical AND on my side and my husband's side, but it was NEVER on the table for us as a middle or first ever.

But once I heard that is what she'd named him ... it just made sense. And I know it meant a lot to his BM that we kept it totally of our own accord.

 

That's really sweet Hanna.  What a great story.  

 

silliestbunny

Oh, good luck. 
Naming made me nervous.  My H was determined to name a daughter after his late mother.  And the name is super old fashioned and it received very mixed reviews among my friends so the idea of having a BM involved and approving of the name seemed impossible.  (Oddly, I gave up looking at names a long time ago because this was SO important to DH if he had a daughter.)

 In the end, it all worked out. 

And the oddest thing.... the middle name we gave her is my maiden name.  Coincedently, it is also the middle name of birth grandfather.  What makes this all the stranger is birth gf is an immigrant from Korea.  We were shocked when he told us that this name, a very Anglo sounding last name, was his middle name.  Turns out, when he became a US citizen, he changed his Korean name to an American sounding name and took  said name as his middle name in honor of the teacher that helped him learn English (teacher shared my last name).