Adoption
Naming an adopted child
Maybe this is a weird question... But I am going to ask anyway. Ha!
For those of you who have already adopted, what process did you go through to name the child you adopted (assuming a newborn)? Did the bio mom/dad have any input? Did you share your name ideas with bio mom? I am just curious.
If your child was already named legally and you wanted to change it, what was the process you went through?
TIA!
For those of you who have already adopted, what process did you go through to name the child you adopted (assuming a newborn)? Did the bio mom/dad have any input? Did you share your name ideas with bio mom? I am just curious.
If your child was already named legally and you wanted to change it, what was the process you went through?
TIA!
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Re: Naming an adopted child
It was pretty easy, but kinda twisty, in our case.
DD was already born when her BM made an adoption plan. She had given her a name just to have something on her birth certificate, but wasn't wedded to it. When we met with her, we told her the name we had in mind, and she loved it.
We just took her adoption decree with her new name to the SS office for a name change on her card.
Our situation was a little different because Ben was already born when we got the call and the birthmom didn't want to meet us. She put the name she wanted on Ben's birth certificate and he was legally that name (of course we put the name we chose on all of his documents) until finalization. At finalization, they legally changed his name and sent for an ammended birth ceritificate that had his legally changed name and us listed as his parents.
We met BM after she chose us and about 3 weeks before DD was born. She asked if she could help name her and she had a name chosen. She was okay with using it as a middle name, and we loved the name she chose. We told her our top 3 names and she chose her favorite of those, although in the end it was not the name we chose. In the delivery room she asked what the name we picked was and we shared our chosen first name and the middle name she chose. She put the whole name on the birth certificate.
But of course, we had to get a new BC because DD's last name changed after finalization. To legally change a child's name, it can be written into the adoption decree. Then once that's done, you just request a BC and then get a SS card, etc.
The naming of our son (newborn open adoption) was a team effort. I will copy my blog post where I talk about it below...(w some details omitted). I love that we did it all together. His name on his orig birth certificate is [current middle name] [birth dads first name] [birth moms last name].
Blog copy: We had a long list of ?maybe? names for a boy, and Leonard was at the top of that list. At our first match meeting dinner with S and B, we found out that her cat was named Leonard. So I guess we both like that name! But, alas, they decided it was a little weird to have a cat and a kid with the same name, so we embarked on the naming journey together.
M and I decided that we wanted them to pick his middle name. We also wanted to be sure that he ended up with a name that they were OK with and didn?t have any bad name associations with. So we gave them our top 10 list and asked them to pic their top 5 from that list. A few weeks later they came back with the top 5, and M and I kind of picked our three faves from that list, with the intention to pick the best one for him after we met him.
Meanwhile, they were hard at work on the middle name. At the last dinner we had before L was born, they threw out a few of the middle name ideas, all of which we liked. Then they started talking about the ?no way? list, like the joke ideas ? Including "M".
?wait you guys, we kind of love "M"!
Fast forward to the hospital, he?s born and we have a short list of three names to decide between ? Elliott, Henry and Levi. We try the names on, they are all great, and none stand out as ?THE name?. We go through the night with him and then I decide to google the name meanings:
Elliott means ?God is my Lord?
Henry means ?Ruler of this house?
And when I saw the meaning of Levi I knew it was his name. I?ve looked it up in various places and it all means a variation of the first meaning that saw: ?Joined together in harmony?
Since that?s pretty much EXACTLY what this little person has done, it seemed like the perfect name for him. Bringing together so many families in harmony, love and grace.
The next day, B came over to our room with their short list, one of which was M. We said we liked all the names that they had?which was true. But we were secretly hoping for M! AND IT WAS!
So there you have it ? the naming of Levi M, or, the awesomeness of open adoption!
DD1's adoption was different. BM didn't want to see her and didn't meet us. We met her family though. They all expected us to name the baby... which worked well. We named her after my husband's late mom, and it's an extremely old fashioned name. For DH, this was almost non-negotiable and I always worried that a BM might hate it and it would cause a hiccup in our process.
With DD2 (naming second babies is so much harder IMO!) we did not have a set name but four we liked. After she was born, we talked with BM who nixed one and gave us her opinion in the others. We did not end up choosing her fave but probably her third of of three choices and she was fine with it. She was very insistant that this was OUR baby to name.
As a side- Birth Gma didn't like the name we chose and she calls her a variation of the name.
We selected the name. Biological mother held off on completing birth certificate info until day 3 - she asked us what we wanted.
We didn't have a middle name selected so she just put first and of course her last name.
At point of adoption we added our last name and kept hers as his middle name.
If she had chosen a name we probably would have tried to honor it as a middle name and then added a first name if our choosing at point of adoption
Our son's BPs knew what we wanted to name him and why. They liked it, and called him that from the time we matched. On his OBC, they put [birthfathers first name] [our choice for first name] [their last name] We filled out our paperwork for the new birth certificate at the hospital and put the name we told them we were using on there. They now call him by the name we gave him. BM told us that they just wanted to use BF first name on the OBC but neither of them liked it very much.
There was a bit of paperwork with SS after finalization but his pedi used the name we gave him from the start.
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Our son's BM did not want to name and had asked what we would like on his birth certificate from the time we met her, nearly 3 months before he was due.
She was sent to L&D directly from an appointment I'd gone to with her so I was at the hospital when she checked in. When they asked her for a name, she called me over and asked that I give the name, first, middle and last, that we had selected. I was so humbled that she had handed over that much latitude.
Part of me kind of wishes he had her last name for now, just to have that small symbolic connection. At the same time, DH and I do not have the same last name and in our small hometown, that throws enough people for a loop so I'm glad for one less hurdle at the doctor's office, with insurance, etc.
Our situation was a little bit different, as well, although there clearly is no "normal"
The twins were given names at birth for their birth certificate, although they relinquished immediately. They went home from the hospital with another adoptive family, who gave them new names. That family "returned" them, and they went to foster parents who gave them a THIRD set of names. They then went to different foster parents who kept their "foster" names. These were the only names we were told when we were chosen by the agency (twins were 6 weeks old by then), so they asked us to pick new names. We found out all of their names at placement, and by coicindence- the middle name we gave Brynn was also her birth name
AG's RR alias was "Gracie" and the only name we knew her by. We didn't find out her Ukrainian name until we met her and we had to provide her new legal name the same day. Since we didn't have time to get to know her or get used to her U name, we chose a new one. Ironically, our 2nd choice rhymed with her U name which would have made for an easy transition, but she's definitely an Anna Gray
With DD, her birthmom didn't name her and we never met her prior to placement. So we named her the name we had planned to name our daughter.
With DS, his birthmom had named him in the hospital, and his first name was an important name to her (he was named for her cousin who had died) so we offered to keep it as a second middle name. She was surprised and touched that we would do that, and although it's TOTALLY not our style, it was important to us and it seemed important to her.