[arthymom]

Did anyone feel a little sad changing your baby's name? When we started this journey, we had a hispanic name in mind that we really love. As we consider a referral, we are thinking of keeping her birthname as her middle name, but really want to name her the name we've dreampt of. But feeling a little sad too.

Just curious if anyone else felt that way.

[lmitchem]

Yes...thats what I thought we would do...but after a while we decided to keep her name and change her middle name. I know lots change the first name and some even both and I don't have a problem with that at all.....but something just wouldn't let me do it. Her first name isn't one I would've given her BUT it is her name so we're happy with it. Just follow your heart and everything will be fine no matter what you chose to do.

Hugs,
Lisa

[my2boops]

I was choosing baby names up until we received a referral! My favorites were Julia and Kaleigh (a combination of my first and middle name). However, when we received our referral, I was completely smitten with her name! I asked who named her, and it was presumed that it was by her birthmother. I though that it would be a wonderful lasting gift from her birthmother to keep her name. Keep in mind though, if she had a name like Ursula (not that it's bad, it just doesn't fit for our family), we may have changed it!

If you like part of her name, I think it's wonderful to keep it as a middle name and use your favorite name for her first. She'll have a gift from Guatemala as well as from you!

[saranbr]

We liked our daughter's given first name which has a beautiful pronounciation in Spanish but will always be the traditional "Patricia" here. Nothing against Patricia at all, just decided that since we'd be fighting a loosing battle to get the right pronounciation we might as well change her first name and keep Patricia as her middle-- which, BTW, is ALWAYS mis-pronounced !

For our second we will be keeping his first and middle name as is-- he's three, we like it and it goes well with our last name. AND, he shares his middle name with his cousin who's a year younger.

I agree with another post-- you must go with your heart. But if you're thinking of visiting I would decide before, you can probably get foster mom to call her whatever you choose. Ours actually asked and still refers to her in our occasional exchange by our given name.

[RobCathyM]

I felt a little funny about changing her name also. But we already had a name chosen so we decided to use it. I was really happy whenever we received a copy of her original BC. The middle name we had chosen was actually her ** middle name too. kinda neat.

After some more thought I think we will use her given first name a second middle name also. That will give her some heritage.

[huganangel]

My daughter was referred to me at one day old. The attorney immediately asked what I wanted to call her and I chose a name I had thought about for a long time. She was called by that name, though not legally, from that day on. The first name on her birth certificate was an anglo name quite commonly found in Guatemala. We don't actually know who gave her that name (birthmother, midwife, clinic staff). I felt a mother's privilege was to name her child and so I did. However, I gave her her birthmother's maternal last name as her middle name. It is much more unusual and is much more connected to her birthmother's heritage (Mayan). She will grow up knowing what her first legal name was and, if she ever desires it, I will totally support her changing her own name. I feel comfortable with what I did because I claimed her as my daughter but also allowed her a permanent connection to her birth family.

[tybeemuffin]

I incorporated my little girl's birth name into what will be her American Middle name. I thought it would be nice to keep a bit of what her birth Mom gave her. Her birth name was Ana Liz. I had orginally planned on using my middle name "Lee" for her middle name. It is a family name which was very important to my family that I use it.

I came up with what I think was a great compromise. I gave my little girl the middle name of "Analee" (Fullname is "Addison Analee") . It is kind of an Americanized version of her birth name, which gives her alittle bit of both me and her birth mom. We also live in the South, so Analee is also a bit southern sounding too, which is an added bonus!

Good luck with your decision!

[mommytoEli]

I hadn't really thought about it before we got ethan at 16 hours old. He had been given a birth name, but it was so big for this little tiny guy. We called him "pookie" for 3 months before we decided to change his name to ethan. It just seemed to fit him. I didn't feel bad, but I do make sure he knows his "first" name. And when he asks me about why I changed it, I will honestly tell him he seemed like an "ethan" to me. If he wants to change it to something else when he is older, then he can. Everyone involved in the adoption process has different views on birth names. In the end, you do what you want to do. It is your family. Someone once told me ethan would resent the fact that I changed his name. But I decided, children resent their parents for at least one thing....so maybe ethan's will be his name change.

[Tiggysgirl]

We've talked about names a lot and what I think is important is that the child at least know what his or her "first" name was. There are all sorts of even practical reasons to change a name from another country, like saranbr said, her daughters middle name is always mispronounced.

We'll look for a name (hers, bmoms, etc) that we can incorporate as a middle name, maybe. Or maybe we'll love his or her given name and it'll work to keep it. We have ideas, but definitely won't name him/her until at least we see the referral and maybe not even until a visit.

amy

[arthymom]

I think we'll keep her birthname as her middle name. It works well with the name we chose as a first name. We plan to keep the hispanic version and spelling of both. I'm over the sadness.

Take care and have a great day!

[Looking for 4]

Well we have three adopted children and that is one thing that has never come up. Now it may be different because our Guatemalan princess will be hispanic while the others are caucasian. But we have a name the whole family is agreed upon (not an easy task) that will honor my husband's parents who passed away in the past two years. We very likely will try to incorporate her birth name as a middle name.

Karen

[WVUMom418]

We had a name all picked out before we received our referral however, when we got our referral our husband said it just didn't fit and he wanted to keep her given name. We lost that referral after 3 months and when we received a new referral her given name was Darlin (pronounced Darleen) Gabriela. Our bio daughters name is Gabrielle so we decided to us the name we had originally picked out as her first name and move Darlin to her middle name.

I did feel bad when we met her birthmother on our pick up trip because one of the questions she asked was if we were going to change her name. I asked her how she chose the name and she said that she had just always loved it. I felt there was no reason to hurt her feelings so I lied , not something I would normally do, and told her we weren't changing her name.

[mombyfaith]

Yes!
Chloe's birth name was Maria Fernanda. Our foster mother named her and her 1st name was Maria, thus she named her after herself. We always knew our daughters name would be Chloe Faith, so we kept the Maria because to us it had double signaficance.
She was named after the precious woman that had loved and cared for her for almost 14 mos and it was also her birth name.
As for us, I felt that it was important to keep part of her heritage. I think it will someday be important to her that we chose to keep it. So she is now legally, Chloe Faith Maria. Quite a mouth full I know!

[redru2004]

DH and I talked a lot about names before we received our referral. We had a few names picked out that we really liked but knew we wanted to incorporate part of our sons birthname into the name that we were giving him. In the end we didn't feel like his first name or middle name fit the name we wanted to give him so we named him Lucas Robert (Robert after my father) and then used his mothers maternal last name as his second middle name. Yes our son has a very long name, but when he's older he can choose if he wants to use both middle names, or just one, or change his name all together.

[Yelena]

Our baby's given name is Dulce Maria. I love love love that name -- but DH doesn't! Why not? Because when most people around here see the name, they say it as if it rhymes with "pulse." Also, he doesn't like it because Maria is his horrible ex-wife's name! And one more reason -- because our last name is a long, cumbersome, not-very-pretty German name. It just doesn't "go" with Dulce Maria.

So we are changing it to Juliana Marie. Juliana was 2nd on my list of favorite names (Yelena was #1, but DH doesn't like that one either!), and we chose Marie as her middle name because it allowed us to keep a tiny part of her birthname.

To answer your question, YES, I feel sad making the change. The paperwork has been filed for the readoption, so it's pretty much a done deal. If I could do it over, I would have pushed a little harder to keep her birthname.