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Post by taliesin on Nov 12, 2013 1:25:12 GMT
I know there was loads about this on the other site, but I wanted your views please..... Oldest is nearly 3 - no need to think about it, not even considering changing his name. Youngest is just over 1 - and it is her name I am thinking about........here are the points/reasons; 1) sibling doesn't call her any name yet - so wont cause adverse confusion for him (weve seen the advice before about how to introduce it to them if we did change) 2) not an 'obvious' or awful name - but it is same as a nieces but different pronunciation3) I find it quite difficult to say (!)...it doesnt 'roll' off our tongues when we talk about her, we both have to 'pause & think' before we say it as keep calling her our nieces pronunciation 4) We are close to family and Ive some reservations about them basically having the same name and their growing up together....identity, confusion within family... 5) have sounded out SW's quite subtly, but theyve just commented its 'lovely' and at least not a 'Brooklyn Bridge' type of name !! 6) weve considered slightly altering a letter and pronounciation....but nothing really works 7) we now know about middle names....and have thought maybe calling her middle name.... 8) we've met family members and no 'deep' reason for their choice 9) we have some concerns because they are siblings so paired together with our names (which BF know), there is increased chance of locating - although no extreme security issues at the moment (despite issues last week I've already posted about...grrrrr....) We are thinking of keeping the first 2 names but adding our own family name (all women in mine for example have same family name, but each known by our middle names) - which we could use as her 'daily name' but keep all 3 officially. I know SW's frown on changing name (and I do agree with some of the reasons); this is not about changing her identity...or taking something away her BF gave her - they gave her plenty....she was with BF a VERY short period and respect why the middle name, but the 1st has no significant meaning to them. We are suggesting instead to keep her 1st & 2nd names so they are always legally part of her identity and she can choose when shes older if she wishes to be known instead as 'x' (which my mother did in her 50's!) There is an element of us wanting to claim her, but tbh, its just as much as the same-ness to our niece! What is the 'legality' when it comes to names, adoption order, adoption certificate - this is one area where weve talked extensivley in HS about names & reasons, but not about the legal order part.....do we 'just' add the 3rd family name when applying for the AO...when she's at school can we register her with 'our choice' as her daily/1st name, or does it have to be exactly same order as AO??? I appreciate this has been discussed before in length....and as said, we're not 'deleting' her given name.....just want to give her an additional which we all call her.... Have any of you done this??
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Post by moo on Nov 12, 2013 5:25:48 GMT
The only one I can think of is spideress' thread about Letterbox contact & birth family contact.... It is on the adopters board.... There are 2 pages.... It's the only one I can remember...... Hope it's the one you meant.....
Xx. moo. Xx
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Post by taliesin on Nov 12, 2013 14:42:09 GMT
HA!!! Moo youre a star...that is the one....i spent ages looking last night and couldnt find it - thankyou mucker !!!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2013 16:00:37 GMT
Well done Moo I spent ages last night looking for Tali and thought it must have been on the old boards as I couldn't find it DUH! Tali when I was adopting my two, YDD's name was the exact same name as my sister's DD, who was 4 at the time. I remember phoning my sister and asking her if she would mind, (thought she might be a bit iffy about it), so thought I'd run it by her just in case. Sister was absolutely fine about it, didn't mind at all, as it is actually a family name within our extended family and here are quite a few of them through the generations. When my niece was told one of her new cousin's was going to have the same name as her, niece was chuffed to bits and asked "is she being called after me?". YDD was also 1 year old and EDD couldn't yet say her sisters name, but called her her own version of it. The reason I didn't change it was A/ I liked it and B/ it was part of her identity and something given to her by her BM. Had it been a name that I hated, or one of those "made up TV soap names" then maybe I would have felt differently. We had been given a profile of a little boy prior to adopting our two, called Prince, and I would definately have changed his name no matter how old he was. Might be alright for Michael Jackson's son, but I wouldn't want people thinking I was calling a dog when I was in the park! If you really hate the name, then I would change it, but changing it just because it is similar to your nieces name is not really a genuine reason IMO. And I do know an adopter who changed her DD's name because said friend thought it was common. Her DD is now 12 and very much wants to be called by her birth first name, tells all her school friends, teachers, etc her birth name, and will now not answer to the adoptive mums chosen name at all. Just somethings to think about.
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Post by gilreth on Nov 12, 2013 17:26:54 GMT
My elder adopted nephew has the same name as his uncle - my brother but there was never any intention to change his name. Sqk Our Sqk has two middle names - one of which is the same as DH's and the other my father-in-law's first name. We intend to keep the latter and swap the former for my father's name which us also a family name in both families. We are keeping his first name as at over 2 he knows it and although not one we would have chosen it has grown on us. However now we cannot imagine him called anything else. Our agency does not like name changes unless it is advised for security which us often changing an unusual spelling to the more usual spelling.
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Post by justbserene11 on Nov 12, 2013 18:00:42 GMT
Our LO was 1 when placed. She had a very (ahem) unusual first name...Anyway, originally we were going to shorten it to a more acceptable name but changed the first and middle names (and obviously the surname). Our LO was moved out of county due to security reasons so the SW/guardian were very pro changing it from the original.
I do many adopters that have changed the name, I think it is more common now and more acceptable to SW's now due to Facebook, tinder, ask.fm etc. I just wanted to add that all adopters that l know have kept the names of older children.
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Post by sooz on Nov 12, 2013 18:16:34 GMT
I changed my ds name, wish I hadn't, it adds in another complication to explain and he often asks to be called by his original name. I'd have had no option to of changed his middle name anyway so made original name middle name.
Could you just swap middle and first names over, or, as In a lot of families call her by middle name?
Also, not changing older sibs name but just hers would throw up more complications, 'why did you change my name and not sibs?' .
Honestly wouldn't recommend doing it unless unavoidable.
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Post by lilka on Nov 12, 2013 18:37:28 GMT
Legalities wise -
You just fill in what you want the new name to be on your adoption order application form. When it gets finalised, whatever you put on the form becomes the legal name and the new short BC and adoption certificate will have the new name on.
Before the adoption order, you can have your child 'known as' a different first name if you wish, but not a different surname (the Adoption and Children's Act specifies a few legal restrictions around Placement Orders, one of the only restrictions is that no one shall cause a child under a Placement Order to be known by a different surname than their legal surname). So there should be no problem with eg. asking a school/nursery to call a child 'Lily' instead of 'Sarah', as long as you have registered them as their legal name. You just can't (legally) have the child registered/known as 'Millie Smith' if her legal name is 'Millie Brown'
I changed my sons name due to a serious security issue. He was 23 months when he came home but I didn't realise what kind of a problem we had for a few months so he was about 26 months when we made the change. My general feeling is that first name changes should be made for a child centred reason, keeping the childs interests first, but I certainly don't believe that name changing is wrong. Only you can work out whether it would be best for your daughter to have a new name. Adding in a middle name is different to me - say your child is called 'Mary Jane Smith' and you want her adopted name to be 'Mary Jane Elizabeth Brown'. You aren't taking away anything there, so I would have no worries about doing that purely because I really wanted to.
If you think you (as a family) are too easily identifiable if her name is kept the same, its worth considering IMHO, you just need to be very honest with yourself about whether that really is the primary reason for a name change, and how big the risk actually is.
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Post by flutterby on Nov 12, 2013 21:28:48 GMT
If you feel it is right, do change the name. Social workers may frown, but can't prevent you from doing this. We were actually advised to change our LO's for security reasons and to be honest, we did think about calling her something similar, so it would be "easier". After much thinking though, we thought that for exactly that reason we should choose a completely unrelated name. If we ever happened to bump into BF, and they heard us call her name, they would not be able to link the two. Looks-wise we are very lucky in that no-one would ever be able to tell LO is not a birth child, she is such a fantastic match to our varied gene pool.
Also, I think it has made it easier for us to bond with her, as we have been able to truly claim her and name her. Do not underestimate how special this can be.
I personally do not understand why this name changing business is so frowned upon. For older children I completely agree, they are used to their names. But younger ones, why not?
All children have to change their last name when the adoption order goes through and no-one questions that, most women change their names when they get married, and I do not think it has ever scarred anyone, only taken time to get used to it.
Bizarrely, our LO never even listened to her original name, it was like she did not have one. Within two weeks she knew her new name and it seems like she finally has an identity.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2013 22:11:11 GMT
Been thinking about this a bit since my last post and I agree with Sooz. I think if you do decide to change DD's name, you should also change DS's name too, otherwise it sends the wrong message to DD that she wasn't quite good enough as she was. Think it has to be both of them, or neither of them. You can't really single her out for different treatment without making her feel less .... can't quite thing of the right word ..... acceptable?
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Post by taliesin on Nov 14, 2013 13:17:23 GMT
Thankyou for taking time to post (I didnt have chance to log on yesterday); this is exactly wide variety of advice & tips I was looking for. Lilka - great advice about the 'process' - exactly what I needed to know thankyou. Everyone else.....we're taking it all on board and continuing to consider/weigh it all up....so thanks for all your thoughts It doesnt sit right to just change it foe the sake of it......but when you start talking about it, you do come round in circles sometimes with the pro's & cons....we also need to be balanced about the other reasons which really triggered our seriously thinking about it which happened last week (to do with when we met some BF). Anyway....still plenty of food for thought.... So thanks again everyone xxx
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