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(Part 1) Brian warned me in comments on the previous post that I was asking for trouble to bring up the contentious naming issue. Being a stubborn first-born, here I go anyway. One of the delights of having a blog is getting to state your own opinion. Feel free to disagree but, y’know, respectfully.
With each of our adopted children we kept their name from their country of birth as their middle name and gave them a name of our choice as their first name. That way we got the pleasure of naming/claiming the child, and child got an ‘American’ name for general use. Yet down the road they still have the option of easily using their Ethiopian name, because it is part of the legal name.
At times when our Korean boys have been around other Koreans, the Koreans always ask about their Korean names, and I am so glad to be able to say that we kept the names as their middle name. Each boy, by the way, has two middle names. Their middle names are both Korean names, but remember that two-middle-name option if you can’t decide between an Ethiopian middle name and an American middle name for your child.
I think that we as parents of children born elsewhere have a responsibility to treasure what they bring to us. In my mind that unequivocally includes their name. Are we proud of their heritage, or did we just see Ethiopia as the easiest place to get a baby? Babies come to us with so little of their own: no possessions, no memories, very little known history. And older children have given up so much and have to get used to so much newness. Do we really need to totally change their name on top of everything else? Even if the child is an abandoned baby who was ‘just’ named by a caregiver, it is still a gift that was given to them in the country of their birth.
As far as we know, our Korean sons were both named by caregivers. Our first Korean son is named Yung Jin, and the second is Seung Jin. They arrived home about a year and a half apart. One of my indelible memories of our trip to Korea to get our second son involves going to Holt, to leave some pictures in our first child’s file. The social worker who’d assisted with our first son was so thrilled that we were back, adopting him a brother.
“What is his name?” was her first question, as she admired our new little guy.
We told her it was Seung Jin, and tears immediately sprang to her eyes. “Seung Jin, Yung Jin. They are named like brothers!” she exclaimed.
It seems in Korea that the custom is to give brothers the same middle name. These two boys, born several months apart to different birthmothers, cared for by different agencies, named by different social workers, yet destined for the same family, had ended up with ‘brother’ names. Wow.
A second story for you: My second daughter’s Ethiopian name is Bizunesh. (If you think of the American word ‘business’ as you’re saying it and then add ’sh’ on the end, you’ll probably get it close to right.) It took me some days to wrap my tongue around that word, let alone my heart. It was just not what I associated with a little girl’s name. For the first time in four adoptions, I even thought of choosing her a different Ethiopian name to use as her middle name.
But let me tell you about her name. We are reasonably certain the name was given to her by a member of her birth family, probably her mother. In Ethiopia names are chosen because of their meanings. My daughter’s name means, “You are much.”
YOU are MUCH.
They wanted her to know she was not lightly discarded, but rather that she was precious to them, despite the circumstances that caused her relinquishment. That name was given to her by people who touched her and fed her and loved her before I ever could. Perhaps they even still pray for her. She was ‘much’ to them. That name was one of the last gifts they gave her. I would not take that gift away from her for anything.
Names are precious. Think hard before you decide that your child’s Ethiopian name is not ‘pretty’ enough or meaningful enough to be used.
Thanks for posting a potential contentious topic in a inflammatory manner. I agree so much with your opinions. I think it would be especially affirming to be able to use the child’s birth name often in the context of a nickname. At least that is what I hope when we adopt. Our family freely uses nicknames (so freely that they have become second names) that no way linguistically resemble our given names. And the meanings behind the nicknames are silly. How cool it would be to have a second name with true meaning.
Glad to see you didn’t take the neutral road. Neutral blogs are boring blogs; we’re all entitled to respectful opinions after all. Thanks for sharing!
Your post is so timely for us as we’re waiting for referral of our second son. I’d love some input on the naming decision.
Our first son, who came to us biologically, is named Titan. That’s a really strong, unique name. We want to find an equally strong and unique first name for our second son. Then, we plan to keep his Ethiopian name as his middle name.
However, we’re struggling because we wonder if his first name needs to reflect his new identity as an African-American, not just an Ethiopian-American. To put it bluntly, some names just sound “too white” for our second son.
Any advice?
Thanks,
Vali
vali, I agonized about this with one of our Ethiopian daughters. The name we had chosen for her first name was one that we were using in honor of my mother, and it is a rather ‘white’ name. It’s been on the top ten list of girls names for a decade.
For weeks I was on the hunt for other little black girls with white-sounding names–and realized that Black children’s names have just as much variety as white children.
Finally we decided to just go with the name we wanted, figuring that the name would become a ‘Black’ name when associated with our daughter. Sure enough, it fits her perfectly, and my mother is delighted to have a grandaughter with that name. I am glad, however, that she also has her Ethiopian name as a middle name…
Mary
The best part of adopting from Ethiopia, when it comes to names, is that Ethiopian children don’t have a middle name. So even if you keep their Ethiopian first name, you still get to give them at least one name.
We just recently dealt with the naming issue for our Ethiopian son, whom we are picking up next week. Even though he was abandoned and likely named by caregivers, we are keeping his Ethiopian name for his middle name. We have given him the first name of Isaiah, which frankly I think could be “black” or “white”. The one thing we wrestled with, was whether to have two middle names. My father and my father-in-law have the same middle name, so hubby and I have always wanted to use it for our son. We thought about saving it for our “next” son, but who’s to say we will have another son? And besides, what kind of message does that give our first son – that he wasn’t deserving of the “family name”? So, we went with two middle names. And I’m glad we did. I think it’s kind of cool!
Very elegantly and sensitively written, as usual! My husband and I have been tossing this subject back and forth since we started the adoption process.
Thanks!
e
Well-done, Mary. And I happen to agree with your opinions! For whatever it’s worth, here’s our adoption naming experience:
Our baby girl who didn’t make it home was Rahel. We were most definitely going to keep her Ethiopian name and add an American name for her option later, as you advocate. I was leaning strongly toward actually keeping Rahel as her first name.
The situation with our second daughter, though, didn’t fall so neatly into one of those paths I’d decided upon for naming! She was abandoned and had apparently been at the orphanage only a short while (I still don’t even know HOW LONG after asking several times…!!!), because she hadn’t had an intake medical exam yet, and no name for her had officially been written down. I was told when I got the referral by phone that they’d been calling her Deborah (for hours? days? weeks??), but that, if we gave them a name *within a few hours*, they would be able to use it for her medical paperwork the next morning. Not only was “Deborah” given by someone at the orphanage, it may not have been hers for more than a day AND it was not even Ethiopian in character. I’ve still never heard of an Ethiopian Deborah! We also have that name among the kids’ cousins already. So we decided to change it. But to what? And we had to come up with it so suddenly and quickly! A couple of caucasians in PA coming up with an Ethiopian name on the spot for a little girl on the other side of the world whom we’d never even seen a picture of just seemed… somehow contrived and just weird. We ended up giving her a common american name that happens to be used in Ethiopia as well. Sarah means, “princess.” And when God tells you that He has a particular little Ethiopian girl in mind to become a part of your family… before that little girl is even conceived… well, what deliberate, intricate loving care for that one little life! Truly, she must be a princess! Some days I feel that the name is too common for her– after all, no one tends to think of Sarah as an African name, though it is often enough. But “Sarah” is my little girl and it’s hard to think of her any other way. Her middle name is Rahel, in honor of her Ethiopian heritage and sister she’ll not meet until heaven.
awhh mary…once again…this brings tears (joyful) to my eyes.
This is an issue in domestic adoption too… our children were both given names by their first parents and we had to think long and hard about whether to change that name or to keep it.
In once case the name was not appropriate and we felt it would only subject him to terrible teasing so we changed it. He was named after a piece of money (and a popular rapper) and we just couldn’t do it to him, not even as a middle name. The second child was named by her birth grandmother not her mom, but we kept it as a middle name and named her AFTER the grandmother as her first name.
Although my children were born in America, the same idea remains…it is important to leave them with this gift from their first parents.
Also, it is hard to try and think of their names in context of the fact that they will now be African Americans…. My husband (a very, very white man) has a very “black” name. People are ALWAYS suprised to see that he is white when they meet him. My son and daughter have names that aren’t considered “black” names, but very white bread, traditional names. In the end, we just felt that it would be nice to give them the names that WE felt strongly about and that gave them a tie to our family as well.
Hello:
We have four bio children and I am caucasian and my husband is Ethiopian. We did choose names that were neither black or white. I am a little confused with that whole idea. However, we plan to adopt from Ethiopia and will probably keep their names as they are most easily translatable into English. We have used Bible names with our four children as they can easily be used in English or in Amharic when with Ethiopians. If we do name our children who are adopted with a different first name we will do this again. It has made it so easy. There are Ethiopian with the name Deborah–it just sounds different in Amharic. It is wonderful to see so much love and care with these letters. Your children will be so blessed. I have just fallen in love with the culture and people of Ethiopia so I can hardly wait to visit when we adopt/ Thank You
This was a very candid, well-written blog. I did want to address the earlier question from someone in the reply section about the virtue of picking “African American” names vs. “white-sounding” names. I will admit wholeheartedly that I am probably biased when it comes to this issue, but as an AA woman (or, to be more specific, a West African woman raised in America and thus viewed as AA even though I technically am not), I advise you to please select carefully among the “African American” names should you choose to go that route. I do not say this because the names are “different” because lots of names are different from traditional white American names, but because some of the names are perceived as “ghetto” names chosen with little regard to their meaning. There are some very interesting names, but some of them will cause your child to be judged unfairly before anyone has even gotten a chance to know him/her. I am not saying don’t use them, just consider using the ones that don’t sound like some rapper’s nickname.
There are some very nice, yet still clearly ethnic, AA names available in AA baby books and on the net.
Some food for thought:
When Ethiopians immigrate here to the United States, with their children, do they contemplate a name change or modification to an African American, or “black” name(contrary to popular belief most African Americans and other english born blacks have the names that are common to most of us)because they think their child will hold this identity? I’m almost sure none of them have. I think that the proposal to try to find a name for your child that is “black” is a covoluted approach to naming a child that is not normal or natural to the way that most people name their children and might have more to do with the torturous way in which Americans think of themselves and each other across groups rather than how YOUR child should or would think of himself. It is more important I think for a child to be named in a way that validates where he or she is from both in terms of their family and culture in Ethiopia and their new family in the United States because their sense of belonging and CONTINUITY comes from those two origins. Finally, I might add that what we teach our children about their name early on at home (not to mention the reverence and pride with which we ourselves hold it) creates opportunities for our child to proudly state who they are to their friends at school who’ll likely think “Cool!”.