Thank [insert religious deity of choice] my parents didn’t have their heads up their nether-regions and decide to change my name to Pax or Zahara or Maddox when they adopted me, because if they had, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be on speaking terms these days.
None of that much-strived-for eloquence will be found in this paragraph: Just have to say that I think it’s crap that it’s considered normal or natural for a child’s name to be changed when s/he is adopted.
That doesn’t mean I resent my parents’ decision. What it means is, I defend fiercely the significance and the cultural weight of the names we adoptees were given before we became adoptees.
There’s a lot of cynical buzz going on out there today, thanks to Angelina’s newly expanded Colors de Bennetton menagerie, that it’s a shame to change a 3-year-old’s name …
… whereas an infant’s name, on the other hand, apparently is somehow insignificant, because of the mythical “blank slate factor.”
That’s crap!
Children are not show ponies or Cabbage Patch Dolls. No child’s name is a throwaway name — regardless of who gave it in the first place.
Adopted children whose birth parents named them deserve to carry that piece of their heritage with them, as it is one of the few parts of their birth histories they can lay claim to, as part of their very own, real, authentic, true-life stories.
Adoptees, such as myself, whose names were given to them by social workers, nurses or orphanage intake workers may find that although those names don’t represent a piece of their birth histories or bloodlines, they nonetheless represent pieces of their rightful histories.
Of course others among my fellow adoptees will feel differently — perhaps ambivalent or otherwise less attached to their pre-adoptive identities, as I have at various stages of my life. But for me, today, Ji In, although not given to me by my umma or abeoji, is as real a part of my Korean heritage as I’ll ever have.
It reminds me that I am who I am today because of the choices made for me by other people. It represents to me the wrongs done unto my umma and many, many others like her — that left her with no freedom and no chance to give me a name that linked me to her or to my sisters. The fact that my Korean name is dissonant among the matching names of my three Korean sisters, whose names fit together as harmonies in a chorus, is a scar on my flesh that I bear with a sense of profound loss. We do not match, but we know why.
To write off my given Korean name as less important than a birth name, or less significant than the name my adoptive parents gave me, I would in effect be admitting that it is acceptable to blot out whole sections of other adoptees’ histories as well as my own.
Oh yes. That’s a bona fide, genuine, stinking, steaming pile of C-R-A-P.
I don’t care if the social worker who chose my name consulted a star chart, reached up and plucked it out of the sky, traced the moles on my left shoulder, or closed her eyes and pointed to a name in the phone book. Somebody in Korea gave me that name. I lost it for 30 years.
My Korean name is a very real part of who I am. I don’t reject it or cover it up anymore. I’ll embrace all the history I can get, because so much of it has been erased.
Yah. I too was horrified about all the name changes–as if they’re puppies.
A name is an incredible identification mark, and she should understand, given the history of HER name–her mother gave her the middle name “Jolie” so that if she should go into show biz, she’d have an “easy” show last name to use (notice she did NOT have to MAKE UP a last name, and notice how she refuses to CHANGE her last name in any of her marriages). And notice how she dropped Voight–names are important, she should know.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I’ve been ticked off about this ever since his “new” name was announced. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07075/769992-85.stm
Well said, Ji-in.
I’ve come to view the name change a just another part of the customization.
It’s amazing how many AP’s never take the time to learn to properly pronounce the “original” names of their children. Gee, wonder why that is.
YES! YES! and YES! I love it when you get fiesty!
I’ve never understood this need to completely re-name/ re-engineer. As if giving the kid your last name wasn’t enough “claim”. Shame, shame.
I gotta tell you though, its a lesson in standing up for yourself when, at age 6, you constantly have to explain to folk, “NO, NOT Ginger. Its JianJian”.
I think “Angedonna adoption” should be the new buzzword for stories like these.
I don’t know if I fully agree with you. I think name changes can be alright in some circumstances. This, however, is not one of those circumstances.
I renamed my daughter, I’m certain whomever named her “sow sow” in China was not bestowing her with the image of a pig which is what undoubtedly she would constantly battle here in North America. As well, I’d like to add that the orphanage officials gave us the wrong pronunciation of her name repeatedly because mandarin is the “official” language. However my daughter lived in a cantonese speaking home. We had to work all that out on our own. Thank goodness she wasn’t our first Chinese friend or brush with Chinese culture.
We have taught her her name, its beautiful and we’re proud of it, every now and again she tells us “Its sow sow to you” with a grin but mostly she just wishes she was an unremarkable little girl that just blended into the wood work. Now that I’ve gotten to know my kid, I know I made the right choice for her for the time being. I hope she’ll be strong enough to return to her name someday, it would make me very proud.
…except are Angelina and Madonna in the same league? I know that they have been odds with each other on Madonna’s adoption of “David.”
Manda — Maybe I didn’t outline this clearly, but I’m not saying that there are never any circumstances under which name changes make sense. My main point was that I think it’s wrong to discount the significance and importance of a child’s original given name — and I question why it’s considered normal or natural to change names, in general, regardless of the child’s age at the time of adoption.
Jade — I think A was quoted as being critical of M’s willingness to skirt adoption law in Malawi, then later said that her quote was taken out of context or something. But at any rate, I hardly consider Angelina the poster child for ethical adoption. Besides that, the U.S. agency through which she adopted Maddox was later nailed on fraud for money laundering and child-trafficking. Not that she knew at the time of her adoption, but it’s clear that she considers herself above reproach.
(Makes my head spin to try to read this all, but here’s a rather thorough, uh, report: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=428507&in_page_id=1773 )
ah, i am enlightened!
rock and roll.
i was renamed. my middle name was “saved” from my Korean heritage as a way of making sure I knew I was adopted.
That was about the extent of my conversations with parents about being different.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
I was directed to this post by someone who had just finished reading a post I wrote about the exact same thing. I am also an adoptee whose name was changed. Although my adoption was not transracial, I too hold attachment to a name that was taken away from me. I can only IMAGINE how much more that name change would mean to someone who had also been removed from a completely different culture.
Since my blog is now passworded due to having been attacked by a hate site, I gave a cry of halle-freakin-leeujah upon reading your post. Keep fighting the fight, girlfriend.
Thank you for writing this. I constantly have to defend my decision to keep my son’s given name. I couldn’t imagine calling him anything else.