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My two cents....
We just returned with three children from Russia. A 2 1/2 year old boy, a seven year old girl, and a twelve year old boy. We have given each an American name to go with their Russian name. Slava Andrew and Valya Joy are old enough to understand family and that they have new lives now. They each , at this point, will have the choice of what name they want to be called. But for the toddler, its different.
Sasha doesn't quite understand what a mom and a dad are at this point. He was in an orphanage from the beginning and we feel that he needs a new identity through his name. There is a biblical basis for this. When God chose to set-apart someone for His purpose, he would often change their name to symbolize this change(Abram-Abraham, Simon-Peter). We started out calling him Sasha as is his Russian nick-name for Alexander. We are now transitioning by calling him Michael Sasha and will go to just Michael soon.
There are faith reasons that we chose Andrew and Joy for the older two and there might be a point where we think it is appropriate to make that change for them. When they grow to understand who they are as a child of God and what that means in their life then that name switch might be a good marker for them. We'll see.
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