…you really love names and want to name your future children but you also want to adopt? Is it morally wrong to rename an adopted baby or toddler? What if you adopt a baby of a different race, if you rename them should you preserve their cultural identity through their name?
I’m not anywhere near having children, but I already know I want to adopt at least one child in the future. I also love the idea of having a multicultural family. And I love names, obviously. But can I realistically hope to blend all these passions together? Or am I just going to have to someday learn to accept the already-given name of a child I adopt?
Sorry for my rambling. Any thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated!
Personally I would say it depended on the age of the kid. With a baby I wouldn’t even think twice, since they’re yet to really bond/react to a certain name, especially if it’s basically a new-born, but with a toddler I’d be more hesitant, since they might already react/know to their birth-name as their own. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but I’d read up on the it when time comes one day. I’m sure that there have been done a lot af research on this, as well as adoptive parents sharing their wisdom and personal experiences.
A good middle ground if you want to keep their cultural ties could be keeping the original name as a middle. Another option is keeping their last name as a middle. That’s what my grandparents did for my aunt. I’d say it’ll very much depend on the unique situation.
I’ve heard a few stories of adoption and them renaming the children. With a newborn to 3 year old, the adoptive parents could choose. But I think with a little older kids they have to agree (Again, not fully sure how it works) [name_m]New[/name_m] life? [name_m]New[/name_m] name?.
No experience with this, but I would assume that other than a new baby, an original name should be kept as long as it’s usable culturally. Kids associate with their names very early on, and I’d think for the sake of self-confidence, self-awareness, and identity, that would be important to preserve.
It definitely depends on the child’s age and what is in the best interest of the child.
If the child is adopted at birth, you may be able to just name the child yourself.
If the child is older, it depends. My former neighbors are a good example of this. They adopted one daughter when she was a couple of months old and renamed her. Her middle name is the name that her birth mother gave her, which I thought was super sweet. Another daughter they adopted when she was close to two years old. They renamed her because they wanted to distance her from her abusive family, who lived in the same town. They chose a name that was similar in sound to her birth name (think something like “[name_u]Stacey[/name_u]” to “[name_u]Courtney[/name_u]”). Now, this particular adopted daughter’s biological siblings were adopted by different families, when they were about 8 and 10. They kept their first names, because the kids preferred it, but they let them choose if they wanted to keep their middle names or change them. Both kids changed their middle names to family names from their new family. It worked well for them. In another family that I know, the child was about 5 years old and asked if she could change her name because her name made her think of when her birth family would yell at her.
In the end, it is a complex issue. Oftentimes, children who are available for adoption have already lost much in their young lives. Changing their name, or keeping it, should be about the best interests of the child, not about how much their adoptive parents love coming up with names. Now, do I personally think that changing an infant’s name is a big deal? No. Not really. A toddler? Eh. Maybe. If a child is ripped from his family, passed to a foster family, or what have you, then gets a new home, new family, and is suddenly told that they have a new name…I worry that could do more harm than good. ’