[DreamingAzure]

I have heard two major sides to this.

Pro side: Giving an adopted child a family name ties him in and gives him an additional bond to your family.

Con side: Giving an adopted child a family name is taking away he personal heritage and making him pretend that he is part of a family that he is not related to.

Also...here is a THIRD side I just ran across the other day when talking to a cousin of mine.

3rd side: Only girls should be given family names. Giving a boy a family name puts too much pressure on him.

How do you feel?? is there another side to it? Is it best to avoid family names all together?

I've been doing a lot of soul searching on this one for the last year or so lol my children will be Vietnamese and the majority of my family names I want to use are Irish/Gaelic and German.

I'm not sure if there IS a right answer to this one lol

[HappyTwinsMom]

Hmmm...guess I didn't really think about that in-depth. One of my twins was named for my mom (who passed away shortly before they were born) and the other was given my middle name; their middle names are after my sisters. I can only tell you what I discovered from them recently...that they absolutely LOVE being named after someone! BTW...they are almost five years old.

[DebCsMom]

Interesting points you made. We have 5 children, 2 bio & 3 adopted. All our children have family names for middle names. Our bio daughter is named after my Aunt who is my God Mother. Our bio son is named after my Dad & brother.

Our adopted children's middle names are after thier Birth Moms. We have no contact with the Birth Dads. We choose to have the BMoms names to have that special part kept with them.

Deb

[NDN]

Originally Posted by DreamingAzure

Only girls should be given family names. Giving a boy a family name puts too much pressure on him.

I'm not sure how it would be less pressure for a girl and more for a boy?

[DreamingAzure]

I think what my friend was thinking of with the boys feeling pressured come from the Jr/II/III boys where there is an expectation of similarity for a boy...in my cousin's family it was taking over a family business...this little boy would have been a JJR the 4th...and they were afraid that would create too much pressure for performance out of him vs. a bio child who would probably have the same similarities etc of the adad and grandfather.

Not sure I agree with that or not...yet on some level I kind of 'get' it too

[NDN]

Wow...the 4th? Can't say that's ever happened in our family.

Personally, I think I like the idea of ONLY naming kids after a relative if that relative is already dead. Of course that doens't negate the possibility of pressure and the like. However, after doing geneology research and coming across 10 people with the same name in the same family--all living at the same time-which apparently isn't as uncommon as I thought...I was sooooo against naming any of our children after relatives that hadn't been dead for quite a while.

[RaTJ+Aaron]

I'm going to give my adopted child a family name. The way I see it, the child will be part of the family and should have an appropriate name.

[StorkWatcher]

Originally Posted by DreamingAzure

Con side: Giving an adopted child a family name is taking away he personal heritage and making him pretend that he is part of a family that he is not related to.

Ouch. This statement rubbed me the wrong way (although I'm sure it was unintentional). When we adopted our son, we made him a part of our family. He belongs to our family and is a member just like any of those born into it. I assume by "related to", you mean sharing the same blood/genes?

Our son is partially named after his adoptive great grandmother who was very close to my husband. We hope he will take pride someday in his family background.

(Now, had we known some names from his biological family or had the chance to ask his birthmother if she had any thoughts on names, we might have considered other names. But we stuck with the names we liked that we would have used on any child - biological or otherwise).

[ManyTimesBlessed]

Well, we've done different things with each of our three kids. With Erick, we kept his birth name and gave him my husband's middle name. With Jayden, his name was Victor and "Victor Whitmire" sounded way too German for a Guatemalan boy, so we changed the whole thing. He does have my husband's initials in reverse, which we like. For Lillian we are also keeping her birth name and giving her my first name as a middle name.

I think it is mostly important to be able to explain to the child why you chose their name. Children love to hear where their names came from, so make sure that your reason is something they can be proud of (ie. "We named you after my mother beause she was so special to me and you are special to me too").

It's probably a good idea to consider why you are choosing a family name. Did you select the name because you wanted them to know that they are just as much a part of the family as a birth child? Or, are you pressuring the child to carry on a family legacy? For us, using our names as our children's middle names was a way of honoring them as the oldest boy and the oldest girl. We also wanted them to know that we are claiming them as our own.

This is an interesting discussion, by the way. I think we all wonder so much about the name thing, but I guess there's really no way to know until our kids are older.

[blessedbybug]

Originally Posted by DreamingAzure

I'm not sure if there IS a right answer to this one lol

There you go, that's the answer ... I for one feel like giving family names add to the connection a child has to your family. Using a name from the bfamily or as in the case of international adoption or adopting from foster care, already given to them alongside a name that connects them (whether family name or just one you choose) is a good compromise to both issues you suggest.

Our DD has three names... her first represents her first family and is a form of her first mother's name (ironically, it was a name we had picked out well over a year before meeting Bug's first mother). Her second is a family name from my family. Her third is a family name from DH's family. We feel it is a great blend of her three families. However, it makes it harder to name #2, to give our second child a name with as much meaning.

[iwrite]

Okay, so my main problem about family names is that I'd have to find a family name that I actually LIKE. If only I liked the names Edgar or Bernard...

I'm a huge fan of the name Spencer Matthew. Neither one of them are family names... I just like them.

Same goes for Grace Lucille. Grace just because I like it, and Lucille after the one and only Lucille Ball (I'm a big I Love Lucy fan).

[Yash]

I'll add my two cents. My son has the same middle name as my father, his grandpa. My son is part of my family, adoption is just how he joined the family. His first name and second middle are names I liked. So it's a combo, I think you should name your daughter the names you like.

I'm also paperchasing for a Vietnamese daughter, who right now will have a first name and first middle name that are Irish or a first name that is Polish and a first middle name that's Irish and a family name to round it out.

I was talking to my college roommate, who is a Korean adoptee, about names. I asked her if she would have been happier or more apart of her birth culture if her parents had kept her birth name or made it part of her middle name. She said no. Even though she hates her middle name, she's glad her middle name is her mom's first name. It's another thing that cements her to the family. She has a daughter who is named after her grandmother. She says it's a good way to keep the family ties.

Yash

[Irishcreme]

Hi,
we gave each of our children a Biblical name for their first names and a family name for their first middle name and then kept one of the names that their bmom or adoption official. It works for us and gives them a tie to their past and their present, and hopefully the first name makes a statement to them about our family beliefs and values.

Interesting thread! I have enjoyed reading everyone's posts.

[jaenelle]

We are tossing around these:


Laura Elizabeth for a girl. My great-grandmother's name was Laura and my mother's name is Elizabeth. Besides thinking the name Laura is very pretty, I like the idea that it's a family name. My mom thought about naming me Laura. Obviously, I love my mom very much, and I think it would be nice to honor her by naming our child after her.

Bruce Clark or Bruce Thomas for a boy. Bruce Clark was my great-grandfather's name -- he was a smart, industrious businessman and I think he's someone it would be good to be named after. He died in 1956 so no one has to worry about there being two Bruces in our family. Thomas is the name of the man I consider my father, although he's not biologically related to me, and since I love him more than nearly anyone, I'd like to honor him.

I don't think there's anything wrong with family names as long as they're people you'd like to honor in some way.