changing child's name (birth mother, parents, orphan, certificate)

[keribus72]

You have said repeatedly that you adopt internationally so you don't have to deal with pesky birth families. You have said repeatedly that the names your children were born with are ugly and sound strange to you. This is contempt for their birth families and their countries of origin. Stated clearly or implied, your adopted children will know how you feel about who and where they are from. And sure thing, go back to your one-sided conversation with people who agree with you and never learn anything about what happens on the other sides of the triad in thousands of adoptive triangles.

[thethreefoldme]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I do not think any of them will want to know more. I once again think there is a difference between American adoptees and International Adoptees.

& this is why adoptive parents should research more than HOW to adopt, they should research the adoptee experience (the international adoptee experience if you must). As has been pointed out, many international adoptees have expressed that it is NOT always best to change names, that it is NOT psychologically more damaging to be picked on for a funny name. You realize all kids are teased for something or another? Yes, being teased as a kid can be tough -- I assure you that identity confusion due to adoption is much more difficult. You can speculate all you want about it, but unless you are adopted or educated on the adoptee experience you really should not pretend to know better than those who are.

[JustJulia]

Originally Posted by kaykee

NOTE: Again, these quoting buttons are quoting more than what I want, or, they are repeating quotes from my previous comments. MODS: please fix this problem.

You have multiple quotes selected--it's not something we can fix. At the bottom of a post, to the right of the Quote button, is a button with a plus sign and quotation marks. You can click a bunch of those, and when you finally click Quote, all the posts are included. In order to make them go away, you have to de-select what you've chosen to quote (if I am understanding your issue correctly). There's a little drop-down menu below where you can choose "Deselect All Posts" or something similar.

Originally Posted by kaykee

In answer to JustJulia (I had to cut out other quotes...)

If you really don't think that birth certificates of adoptees should be changed, why don't you join the protest against this practice?

I gave money at one of the websites I visited.

Originally Posted by kaykee

Do you support the sealing of adoptees' true birth ceriticates?

No, I think everyone should have access to their birth certificates to the extent they are available.

Originally Posted by kaykee

I know you split the topics once before, but this is really the same issue. If adoptees' names at birth, and parents of birth, were respected and not changed, we would not need to be asking the questions about changing adoptees' names due to adoption.

Simply talking about "changing names, yes or no?" does not address the underlying legal aspects of the consequences of changing the adoptee's name upon adoption.

Adoptees legal identities are changed. This is identity theft.

How would YOU like it if it happened to you?

I don't know. I am not adopted, nor are my children adopted, so I don't have much of a frame of reference. I definitely sympathize with the stories I am told.

Originally Posted by kaykee

If adoptive parents want to adopt a child, you should honor and respect who you are adopting. That means allowing that child to retain her or his name at birth. If you want to Americanize a nickname, then do so informally.

When my children were young, we had friends from Japan. They taught us how to pronounce their son's name. The children were playmates. No one made a big deal out of the Japanese boy with the funny-sounding name. He was accepted for who he was. This family moved back to Japan, but there are immigrants who come to America and keep their names. We don't force them to change their names because we want them to be American and sound just like us.

Hmmm. I destinctly remember meeting real Africans. They taught me how to pronounce their African names. And nieghbors down the street from India kept their names, too.

You want to adopt a homeless child from a foreign country? How about respecting who that child is by keeping that child's name at birth and real birth certificate?

I am not sure whether this last part is meant for me or not. I am not an adoptive parent, but if I were, I would probably look into domestic open adoption first.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by MirrenC

I self-refer as a "bastard" regularly. Bastard Nation, one of the early activist groups, reclaimed the name. Technically, it means "fatherless child," I am a definitely one of those. I also meet regularly with a group of other adoptees in the Bay Area, and we call ourselves the "Bay Area Bastards," openly.

I think that "bastard" and "illegitimate" were meant to taint us, and that our adoptions were meant to "save" us from that taint; we hide in plain sight "as if born to" our aparents, although we of course are not. We know that we were born to one family and adopted by another, and we don't apportion shame, so the term doesn't matter. When people use it as a put-down, of course, it sucks, but it's like any other moniker of a minority that is reclaimed, I suppose, for internal use. Some of my adoptee friends had married original parents even, and don't qualify as "illegitimate" at all, but still self-refer as bastards.

My take is that some of us use it for ourselves, but don't like it when "civilians" (that is, the non-adopted) use it to talk smack about us.

I guess it's one of those cases of sociolinguistic variation, lol. In my social circle (deaf school), it's mainly used as the male equivalent of "b*tch". In sign language, the only difference between the signs for b*tch and bastard is the fact that b*tch is signed on the chin (where girl, woman, and female cousin are signed) and bastard is signed on the forehead (where boy, man and male cousin are signed). I never knew it was reclaimed in adoption communities. I guess it's a bit like "que$r" in the LGBTQ community. I self-identify as "que$r" but if a homophobic person calls me "a que$r" I will assume offense was intended. Thanks for filling me in.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by sheena12

The girl OLGA Oilesya for short. There is a difference in opinion here and I know that there are those of you who don't believe in changing a child's name in any circumstance. I think it depends and every name and each situation is different.

said in thick Russian accent Only in Russia nickname is longer than official name. end accent

I think "Olesya" sounds great to American ears.

Olesya Rulin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[sheena12]

Originally Posted by nimchimpsky

said in thick Russian accent Only in Russia nickname is longer than official name. end accent

I think "Olesya" sounds great to American ears.

Olesya Rulin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't. I think it sounds oily. It might be a language thing. I know a Russian speaker , a good friend who hate the word adorable because in Russian a work like it means born inside out or deformed. I don't know the word.

So back on topic - any ideas for new names for the two younger kids Olga and Oleg?

The older boy is Michael or Mikhail.

Oleg sounds like " a leg". And a nasty fashion designer my father knew who gave me a job in his home.

I really would like help with this. Oleg, is in Russian countries not even a young person's name. My friend tells me this.

[susankate]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I don't. I think it sounds oily. It might be a language thing. I know a Russian speaker , a good friend who hate the word adorable because in Russian a work like it means born inside out or deformed. I don't know the word.

Oleg sounds like " a leg". And a nasty fashion designer my father knew who gave me a job in his home.

I really would like help with this. Oleg, is in Russian countries not even a young person's name. My friend tells me this.

I think with the spelling as Olesya rather than Oilesya which you originally had, I agree with Nimchimpsky that it is a very pretty name and it very much suits the very pretty girl in the Wikipedia article.

[MirrenC]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I think that children can be psychologcally damaged just as much by having a bad and disliked name. I also think that many children do not want names given to them by people who have hurt them.

Agreed. But it's really up to the child/adoptee.

My adoptive father gave me a Scandinavian ethnic name, nothing terrible like Brunhilde or anything out of the Ring Cycle you may have heard. But it is pronounced one certain way. It became popular in the U.S. pronounced another way. I have politely corrected people my entire life; people either respect me and get it right, or they don't, and they continue to get it wrong. I don't care if people in stores or on the phone get it wrong, but coworkers and others, if they've known me a long time, and STILL get my pronunciation wrong, I take it as an insult. That kind of carelessness with someone's name is rude beyond measure.

Names matter. And the children should have a say, without input from adults about "what's silly."

At the age of 43, and because I am not Scandinavian at all, I am changing my name. I am finished with the the identity my father created for me, because I never felt like "That Name," anyway.

I love my father, and he is sad, but he gets it. He recently returned from visiting family in Norway, and showed me a bunch of graves--I had wondered if it were a family name, but it wasn't.

The name I have chosen has nothing to do with my original family, either. I don't feel enough a part of their family to choose anything remotely related to them. So my new name is all mine.

Yes, of course, I have non-adopted friends who changed their names, too, for whatever reason. But I am doing this because I feel I have an identity that is not tied to anything except myself, and my children.

And apropos of the reference to David Brodzinsky, the psychologist who researches and works primarily in adoption: he is also an adoptive parent. He is able to understand adoptees and what we go through, and be supportive, while also recognizing the challenges of adoptive parents. He is definitely worth reading. I saw him as a therapist for a while and really appreciate him.

[CraigCreek]

Sheena, since the children you will be hosting will only be with you for a few weeks, in your position, I think I'd keep their names, so it would be one less change for them, as they'll be encountering all sorts of new things while they're visiting. Their names may not sound great to you, but they belong to the children and changing them right away might cause unnecessary distress, especially since the children are just visiting while being hosted, which is not the same as adoption.

Once you get to know them a bit, you might ask them if they'd like to use American nicknames "just for fun" while they are visiting. "Olesya" is pronounced "O-LAY-sia", so perhaps she could be called "Lacey" and her actual name could be retained. "Alicia" also has a very similar sound. Also, "Olga" is often pronounced "Ol-ya" in Ukraine. St. Olga figured prominently in the early history of the Russian Orthodox Church, hence there are many Olgas in Russia and Ukraine.

I don't know if there are any nicknames for "Oleg", but will ask around - most formal names of Russian derivation do have nicknames which are popular for children.

If you hope to eventually adopt these children, you probably already know that families who host are cautioned that the hosted children they may come to love very much may not be available, for one reason or another, when the time comes to travel to Ukraine for adoption. This might be another easy to procede with caution in regard to their names.

I hope everyone has a grand time during the children's visit - what a great opportunity for them to travel to the US and experience another country!

[MirrenC]

I have many Russian, Serbian, and Czech friends, so the names you mention don't seem odd to me. Parents and kids alike have many of them and function fine in the United States. One of my six-year-old son's best friends is Mikhail, and he goes by the nickname Misha. Alexander is a great Russian name, with the wonderful nickname of Sasha. Olesya sounds pretty to me. Anna is a beautiful Russian name, as well. I love Russian literature and studied Russian in college and dreamed of giving my children Russian names. Sadly, I have a German husband who was not open to Russian names due to his cultural prejudices.

I do hope that if you don't like the child's name, you won't externalize it to the child; for children, names are a huge part of their identity, and telling them that you don't like their name can be internalized as saying that you don't like *them*, even if you don't intend it that way.