Changing first name

[mollymollymoo]

Hi
It's looking really likely that we've been matched with a little girl - very excited! However - her current name is so identifying and ridiculous that even our social worker has said they can work with us to change it.
She'll be nearly 2 when she comes home.

Does anyone have any experience of this, the practicalities etc?

This is our 2nd adoption and we would have been more than happy to keep her name otherwise.. but really it is awful and not fair on her to have to grow up with it!!

0rlaith excellent points.

MrsMatty thank you for sharing. It is so good to hear of adoptions that work out well. As an adopter myself it gives me heart to know that things can and do work out well.

Brightsunshine- I will be honest. Any credibility that you started off having has been eroded with every post. Why? Because of your expectation that you can post your opinions as facts without ever adding any weight to whatever you are saying. Your absolute refusal to divulge your part in adoption has meant that I absolutely am not bothering to read your posts seriously anymore. Most of us are an honest bunch on here, we are open about what our experience is to help people to understand our point of view or opinion. I suspect you have no actual direct experience of adoption and you feel that will mean you won’t be taken seriously by us. Well, I take people more seriously when they are open and honest. No doubt you will come back with a long winded, very academic reply and shut me down. I am happy that there some amazing ladies on the board who are able to match your tone and way with words to challenge your way of thinking.

A specialist in what? Adoption? Psychology? Flower arranging? This means nothing as you aren’t prepared to say what your interest in adoption is. I’m not asking you again, you’ve made it clear you don’t want to answer this, but it’s a fairly meaningless comment. Sorry.

Basically in a nutshell. Oh, and I’m just your average, bog standard adoptive mother. No 10 years of specialist knowledge and academic training here. Just an expert in a beautiful daughter and her birth family/experiences. I’d say that makes me the expert on her name (which is her birth name incidentally). If I had needed to, I would have changed it.

Thank you Italiangreyhound I'm glad my words give a bit of hope. I think one of the most important things to me is that my adoptive parents were always honest with me. I can't remember not knowing that I was adopted. There was never any secret about it, or sense of shame. I was accepted into a huge extended family and treated just the same as all cousins. If I've learned anything from my experience, that is the importance of honesty with children (in an age appropriate way if course). I was so lucky with my adoption, had a wonderful childhood. I don't want to detract from the issues in this thread, but to me, how we are treated, respected and loved far transcends the business of naming.

MrsMatty totally agree. We've been told all along honest in age appropriate language is best.

MrsMatty - always nice to hear from adoptees! What you said warmed my heart in a world so full of negativity.

Thank you Yellowflowersgreengrass, always good to know. I do feel, especially these days, that adoptive parents have a phenomenal job to do. Knowing what my DD and SIL have been through, and being aware of the difficulties some of you face, often with precious little support, I am full of admiration. More power to you all.

yellowflowersgreengrass comehomemax i made the point that adopters should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other parent when changing the first name. I absolutely stand by that and I think the guidance on the A58 should be clarified. But all of my posts are personal opinion and if you find them incredible or frustrating then I am sorry about that, it is fine that you ignore them and not engage. It isn't fine, however, to make it personal, ever.

My earlier posts were advice about supporting children if their names are changed, and about panel are looking for in relation to name changing.

Could I ask everyone to please try to discuss the issues without personal attacks. It is a really poor show, especially on this board. I have felt extremely frustrated and angry about some of the opinions on here but have tried to keep things neutral and focus on the points being discussed rather than making things personal.

I don’t think anyone is “attacking” you. More calling into question your judgement/reasoning/motives/opinions. You’re right though, I can ignore your posts and shall from now on.

yellow your posts are uncalled for, but if you are going to leave me alone now then fine, I will leave it there. Try to challenge the post not the poster in future.

Stop targeting my posts as the only ones that have called you out, plenty of other people have disagreed. If you believe they are personal attacks then use the report button. Don’t patronise me. As for saying it is “a poor show especially on this board”, we are allowed to challenge opinions and viewpoints. Just because this board is about adoption does not mean it we have to accept everything that everybody else says. You may have an excellent way with words but, quite frankly, your patronising attitude that you have decide to aim at me will not be tolerated. Report away

I think the thing that seems to be being missed here is that many adopters may feel they want to change a name because of security issues, etc but may feel they cannot do so. This is my concern.

I don't think that I should have the right to name or claim my child in that traditional sense. I may have felt differently if he had been younger but at 3 he very much knew his name and I did feel I would have needed a reason to change it. And after the matching process I felt he was who he was and we chose to keep the name.

He did not like or want his middle name (actually did not believe it was his!) but by the time we were legally finalizing the process he was 4 and I did not feel he was old enough to make that choice. He did express an interest in another name and again I did not feel he was old enough to make that choice.

However, friends adopted a child older than our son, by several years, and she chose to change her name. Perhaps for her her old name was associated with a family who had not been able to care for her and she wanted a change. If I had been in that situation, I would have allowed it.

I remember a thread on here a while ago about name changing and a child unhappy with their name and I always support the child in these matters, except where I feel the child really is too young to decide.

This comment is not aimed at anyone and is not personal, I just wanted to get us back on track, if possible.

So in my thinking there is only one reason when a name change is right, and that is when a parent (or an older child) feels it is right. Parent meaning legal or biological/birth parent, if we are trusting either to care for the child we should trust them to make a wise choice on this.

PS I felt I had evidence there were no security issues in our case, I think having evidence of this sort is rare.

I'm a adopter and a SW. Unless there is a risk I wouldn't advocate for a name change due to the huge impact on identity.

However sometimes the risk warrants this. I have had a case where it was necessary to change the names of two children, the FCs supported this brilliantly. Everyone in the FC home changed names. FC renamed the children (when in reality adopters did) and children chose names for FC and pets.

Hi twinmumma and welcome to Mumsnet and the adoption boards .

Do tell us more about your adopted twins - I don’t think we have any other twin adopters here so we’d love to hear more .

@Kr1stina hello 👋🏻 and thanks for the welcome.

They are three and are my world 🌎 💕

I don't want to share their story because I feel like that's theirs and their birth families.
But I can say that they have had some horrible experiences (although not all bad) in their little lives and some additional needs.

We are growing and learning together and I'm loving (almost!) every second of it.

I think the thing that seems to be being missed here is that many adopters may feel they want to change a name because of security issues, etc but may feel they cannot do so. This is my concern this has been covered in this thread, though, Italian, I think. If there is a security risk, this is recognised by panel, sws, and we have heard on this thread than in some cases the adopter is asked to change the name - there have been posts about this up thread. I posted that I thought panel would be looking for adopters to have thought about the impact of both changing and not changing a name, etc.

"This is my concern this has been covered in this thread, though, Italian, I think. If there is a security risk, this is recognised by panel, sws, and we have heard on this thread than in some cases the adopter is asked to change the name - there have been posts about this up thread. I posted that I thought panel would be looking for adopters to have thought about the impact of both changing and not changing a name, etc."

Yes but panel and social workers may not know of the risks.

They may minimise the risks.

I think a social workers perspective of s risk might be quite different to an adoptive parents.

You are right Italiangreyhound. The social workers in my grandchild's case most definitely underplayed the risks. Information later came to light about BF which caused quite a lot of concern. Had the situation been made clear by SWs at the time of placement, LO's first name might well have been changed.

MrsMatty this is my fear.

Information may not be known or may be withheld.

When the policy is something like name changing is bad then you need to realise that social workers might end up pushing s policy of not changing names.

Yes, they might see a situation where there is an exception to that 'rule'/ 'recomendation" but for whatever reason they want the child's name to stay the same.

In situstioms where a name is quite unusual or has a younique spelling then this might be used to trace s child.

Thus Chardonnay is not just a 'working class name' as opposed to Charlotte, it is a really unusual name compared to Charlotte.

Plus naming a child after an alcoholic drink (not unheard of in the past, think Brandy, Sherry) might also remind a child their birth parent was an alcoholic who could not care for them.

Likewise, a child may be named after a parent who abused or neglected them.

If we start from the premise that 'name changing is wrong', rather than starting from the premise 'what is best for the child?', we can end up with social workers encouraging parents to do things which could lead to potential danger for a child.

Why are social workers so invested in children keeping names given by Family who could not care for them? Personally, I do not think it is because of any evidence on name identity. But even if it is, this doesn't over rule safety.

brightsunshineatlast you have agreed their are circumstancea where vane changing is sensible but I'm a culture of not chsmgomg names tgis means the onus is on social workers to bring tgis to parents attention. Do you see how rgat may be problematic?

This may have been said on this thread before but I think it is relevant. It is relevant because social workers making policy or imposing their views will not be around if things go wrong later.

The idea parents need a really good reason to change a name is, to me, ridiculous. But if that is the criteria many adopters who adopt children with very unusual identifying names (especially sibling groups) do have a really good reason - privacy and security.

But it is very hard to talk about this during matching as there is a real concern from adopters that this could cause the break down of a match or even a placement.

I can categorically say that SWs do minimise the risk, to an alarming degree. Some, not all, SWs get fixated on things and can't deviate from that regardless of the context.

When faced with the fact that violent and aggressive BPs were members of various 'SS stole my children; here's their photographs, names and DOB, please look out for them' groups (which we found out ourselves, we weren't told by the placing LA at all), the entire SW department wouldn't accept that there was a risk keeping unusual, distinctive names and just fixated on names = identity. Our SW and her department were all in agreement that there was an enormous security risk and the idea that names shouldn't be changed was not only absurd but dangerous. The match fell through because we had brought up the issue. I sincerely hope that the LA realised after that there was a valid concern and they allowed the name changes, otherwise those children and their adoptive parents will be living constantly on edge and the children in particular will not be able to live a 'normal' life free of their BF; which they obviously deserve.

It's situations like this that adopters are terrified about - I would always advise adopters to not bring up changing names unless the SW do first, and if they feel that there's a security risk, name change at placement. Social workers minimise risk and they minimise the backgrounds of children because they worry if they're honest potential adopters won't adopt. They're not doing it to be mean (there is often a healthy dose of 'we know best' though) but regardless of their intentions, it's wrong. It means adopters are constantly on their guard, trying to make sure they're not being strung along, because at the end of it, it's us, and our children, that are living with the risk. It's all very well for SWs and other people to bang on about name = identity, but I'd bet a lot of money on the fact those selfsame people would suddenly be back-tracking if they were being asked to live with the risk and the inevitable fear of your children being hunted down by people you know are violent, dangerous, actively looking for your children and think they've been stolen. I know if I'd been brought up in fear, unable to participate in group activities because of the worry of photographs, unable to have social media, not able to go to certain places if you lived close by to BP etc but I was told if my name had been changed, all that wouldn't have been much of an issue, I'd be wanting to know why my (adoptive) parents hadn't done it.

I've just posted evidence to back your post up, @Italiangreyhound. Perfectly timed! 

I have been getting notifications to let me know a new post has been put on this thread, along with the first section of said post. Then when I come to the thread the posts aren't here.

Is this happening to anyone else? From the content I think they're from the same poster. I've got screenshots of the notifications to prove I'm not going insane!