Adoption and naming: to change or not to change

In my last post, I wrote about “comedienne” Chelsea Handler’s comments about Angelina Jolie’s adoptions – specifically why she chose to adopt internationally, and why she changed her Vietnamese son’s name to Pax. (Did ya notice how I put “comedienne” in quotes? Yeah. That’s because she’s not so funny.)

Anyway, for some time now, I’ve been wanting to write about the pros and cons of changing an adopted child’s name, and Ms. Handler’s criticism of Angelina’s decision to do just that gave me some food for thought.

I think I probably fall into the majority camp because I can see both sides of the argument and have done it both ways. Frankly, I’m still sorta wishy-washy about it, but definitely feel we’ve made more educated decisions lately. Part of me wishes we would have kept all our kids’ original names, but part of me thinks this might have made things more difficult for them. After all, even our Chinese tutor has chosen an American name for herself. Like I said, I’m wishy-washy.

There are some people, however, who feel very strongly that there is only one right answer, and most of these people are in the anti-name change group. Some might call their views militant, but I don’t. I think their reasons are compelling, and every parent considering a name change for their child – even an infant – should be aware of and really think about the anti-change arguments. (Please see “adult adoptee perspective” links below.)

When we adopted the first time, I must confess that it never entered my mind that we would keep our daughter’s Chinese name as her first name. We tried for a while to come up with a Chinese name that sounded “American” (something like MeiLi or LiAn), but we ultimately decided that this was kind of a trivial approach to naming, besides the fact that it’s really easy to give your child a horrible pseudo-Chinese name with a nonsense meaning (or worse). We knew her Chinese name would be important to her and to us, so we decided we’d keep it as a middle name and choose a first name for her.

Later, we gave some serious thought to keeping our second Chinese daughter’s name, Tian (tee-ehn), but I really loved the name we’d chosen for her before we even knew who she was, and I was worried people would forever mispronounce it as “tee-ann.” We again kept her Chinese name as her middle name.

In the middle of waiting for our Haitian kids, I came across the blogs of several adult Korean adoptees who lamented having lost everything from their precious birthparents to even their very own names, and I finally began to realize that child naming deserved more careful thought than we were giving it. We couldn’t undo the names we’d already given our Chinese daughters, but we began to emphasize more plainly that they had claim on those names and could use them whenever they wanted. We explained that if they decided they wanted to use those names with certain groups of people (or even exclusively) as they got older, it would be OK with us. For a short time, one of our daughters toyed with having us call her by her Chinese name, but ultimately chose to go back. (Their Chinese tutor always calls them by their Chinese names, however.)

So as we were waiting for our Haitian children, we began to really think about the names we’d chosen and whether it was appropriate to change them. In the end, even though it was hard to abandon the name we’d chosen for our oldest daughter, we really felt it was best to keep the name she’d known all her life. After traveling twice to visit her, it seemed wrong to call her anything else. So we broke with tradition and kept her first name, and instead gave her two middle names (her birthmother’s name and my mother’s name).

For our babies, however, it wasn’t that clear-cut. Our son had a name that is a female name (exclusively) in this country, and our daughter with albinism had been given a name that was a reference to her condition and could easily have led to teasing. So in spite of the arguments against name changes, we decided it would indeed be best in their cases. Each received a special first name we chose, as well as two middle names – one from our family and one from the birth family. As we have done with our Chinese daughters, we will do our best to assure them that each name is theirs, and they can use them as they wish. I hope that they will be proud of their names and the people they were named for.

Further Reading:

The birthparent perspective:

The Naming Issue 1
The Naming Issue 2

The adult adoptee perspective:

Renaming as Cultural Erasure
Survey of Adult Korean Adoptees

Other:

Adoption Name Change (How To)
Adopt, but Don’t Turn Ming into Kylie

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