Changing baby's name

[RoomForMore]

Hi all, just hoping for some external views on this. We're heading to matching panel next month to (hopefully) be matched with a baby. She is a few months old.

I'm not massively keen on her name... It's nice enough but not what we would have chosen if she'd been a BC. Her middle name is quite identifying and definitely doesnt match our BC names so probably wouldn't swap them round. SW is adamant we can't change her name. Is this true?

Did you change your AC name? How did you go about it if you felt SW wouldn't agree? And if you were an adopted child, were you given a new name and how did you feel about this when you were older?

I'm aware that it's the only link she has to her mum, so I don't want to upset anyone.

All points of view are welcome!

I have maybe an unusual take on this, I wanted to change DS name, as it’s the same as mine. We were told categorically no that SW wouldn’t support it and the judge wouldn’t approve it.

We didn’t and I found it really hard that overnight I lost my own name. My husband and family couldn’t call me by my name any more and I believe that this contributed to me having Post-adoption depression.

Having seen the effect it’s had on me, I wouldn’t advise anyone to change unless they had to.

@fairybatman I am really sorry to hear that. I think that until it happens to you, it is difficult to understand. I hope that the adoption is otherwise going well.

My Dad was adopted and his birth name is very important to him. For what it’s worth!

I was adopted as a young baby. Didn't find out about my birth name until I was in my 30s and tracing birth family. I really dislike my birth name, and am grateful that my adoptive parents changed it to something completely different. I appreciate that this may be different for adopted people who identified by their birth name before being adopted.

It isn't so much you take what professionals say as gospel or regard it with awe, it is more that if you cannot discuss things with professionals without holding back information, misleading, being dishonest, then I don't think you have the emotional maturity to parent an adopted child.
There had been at least one poster to these boards who had a link magically vanish at the merest suggestion that they might change names of two very young siblings. (IIRC neither name on its own was particularly identifiable but both together was.)

So nothing to do with maturity. (Or at least not the adoptive parents’ maturity.)