[bluedaisy]

I'd love to hear some of the names of your Ethiopian children, especially those names that are Ethiopian. How did you Americanize it? Or was it easy to say and spell? Did you hear a name you found particularly beautiful? Thanks for sharing here.

[fergiesask]

Hello,
My husband and I are flying on October 30 to go and pick up our twins... We have choosen to keep their names just because they will be four years old on November 20.

We live in Canada.

Their names are:
Surafel - meaning Angel - His name is easy just the way it looks.
Elshadai - meaning Almighty - Her name was a little more of a challenge...Amy Grant sings a song - Elshadai and after listening to the song for about 3 days - My husband and I could finally pronouce her name...

Lana Lee

[alindy]

Lana- Good for you for keeping their names. I love the name Elshadai (and I've always loved the Amy Grant song!) I hope that when we get a referral, the names of our children will be something that we can pronounce and something that they will be able to keep without people mispronouncing and mispelling their entire lives. I have an unusual first name and its definately a drag having to pronounce it for people all the time but the idea of 'throwing away' the name that their birth parents gave them seems wrong too. I'm not sure what we'll do if our Ethiopian children have unusual names. We're hoping to adopt "older" children (sibs under age 6)

Any advice from veterans is appreciated!

[hdowns]

We are going next month to pick up our two little girls. We have had lots of humming and hawing about what to do with their names. They are 3 and 16mos and we are going to keep thier names. They are Tigist and Belaynesh. People usually think Belaynesh is quite pretty and Tigist might be a curse. Also, we spoke with an Ethiopian here and relized that most people will probably mispronounce Belaynesh because the ay is actually pronounced like a long i and the emphasis is placed there.

We have spent the last month calling them by their names and can't even imagine them as anything else at this point. We might have considered changing them if we didn't live where we do - we live in Oakland, CA and there is a huge Ethiopian community and it is a very diverse place.
We gave them the second names of Amira and Renee, respectively (chosen to sound nice with their first names) and will let them know if ever they want to go by their second names they will be able to.
Also, we believe that thier birthparents gave them these names so we consider it a lasting gift from
them.

Heather

[Sunshine Mom]

I know a little girl here whose name is Tigist. She was adopted at age 2 and is now 11

[hopefully4]

Our son's name was Yidnekachew, and we kept it as a middle name, but it is so hard to pronounce, we thought he would always have to help people with it. Ethiopians pronounce both YID-Knee-kachew and yid-knee-KASHEW, which makes it even harder.
However, Yidnekachew is the first name of the man who really helped Africa become involved in the Olympics, and we felt that it was important to keep his name because of that cultural connection.

Katie

[teranga]

We decided ahead of time that we would keep our son's name if it was given to him by his bio parents, but would not feel obligated in any way to keep it if it was assigned by the orphanage.

Our son's name was Mamush. It was not given to him by his bio parents, so we felt less attached to it (and he was 8 months when we picked him up, so still very young). We were considering keeping it nonetheless, when we learned that it means "boy" in Amharic and is not a given name in Ethiopia. It is used as a sort of nickname for boys, kind of like saying "come here kiddo". Not a name but used sometimes. Also it is very common with orphans b/c many times (apparently) boys are called Mamush until their parents name them. When a child is orphaned, Mamush doesn't get replaced w/anything which is so sad to me that there was no one there to replace Mamush w/a given name. Sometimes it continues to be used after a formal name has been given (as a nn), but it is never a boy's given name (we were told this by numerous people in Ethiopia).

So...all those factors combined, we changed it. He did also have a 2nd name, which was the name of the person who found him. We kept that as his 2nd name.

His second name is Bekele, which has a great meaning. It means "one who has grown or come into being."

Teranga

[blueberry1966]

We adopted 4 month old B/G twins, Beyene Bentisha Argo and Bethlehem Bentisha Argo. Their first names were given to them by their maternal grandfather. Argo was their maternal grandfather's name. Bentisha is a common name from the Sidamo region where they are from, and was given to them by an aid worker with the NGO who placed the children into the orphanage. We decided that we had to keep the names given to them by their grandfather, and kept one of their other two names, and then obviously gave them our last name.

They are now Beyene Argo Taylor and Bethlehem Bentisha Taylor. For simplicity we have also given them the American nicknames of Ben and Beth. It works for us, and allows them to maintain their beautiful Ethiopian names.

[DaniWestRN]

Originally Posted by teranga

would not feel obligated in any way to keep it if it was assigned by the orphanage.

We felt this way too. Also name meaning are VERY important to me as they are to the Ethiopian culture. We felt that it is actually in the spirit of the Ethiopian culture to change our daughter's name to allow for a powerful meaning... especially since her orphanage name was not given by bio-parents. We did replaced this name with another Ethiopian name (with a more suitable meaning) thus allowing us to keep some of her heritage.

[hilzim]

Our children that we adopted this summer are named Million (sounds like mill-yawn) and Genet (Ga-net) I don't know what Million means, but Genet means paradise. We wanted to keep their birth names. I couldn't imagine changing their names unless they wanted to.