Seeking advice regarding change of name please

[Waitingforsummertocome]

i changed DD’s first name on the advice of her Court Guardian and with the approval of our matching panel. It was a straight swap of her first and middle names as her first name (now middle name) is quite unique. If she decides that she would prefer to switch back when she is older I would of course be fully supportive of this.

Fast forward five years and life is good, DD is happy and settled and I don’t want to do anything to risk this. DD knows about her name change and has never questioned this.

DD’s birth mum has very recently started writing back from our letterbox contact (1 letter so far) and obviously used her original first name. It feels quite uncomfortable referring to DD as her middle name when I write back as I’m responding to a person rather than just sending the letter to children’s services not knowing whether it was being read by her birth family.

I’ve tried to write the letter without using her name but it reads oddly. Ive thought about contacting the letterbox team about asking whether to write a letter explaining the name change to her birth mum but I don’t want to cause her distress and this would also undermine the precaution of changing her name in the first place.

I’d quite like to show DD the letter at some point so will need to revisit her name change and I think as she gets older she will have more questions.

Any thoughts or experience would be welcome. I know that name changes are controversial but I truly believe I was doing the best thing for DD at the time and it has certainly given us the anonymity we needed.

thank you

We edited our LO’s name. So it was double barrelled, which made it very identifying and their were some negative connotations with the second name, so on the advice of their social worker we dropped that and changed their name legally to just their first name.

We have letterbox and just refer to LO as their full birth name, as does birth mum. It is weird, you’re right, but one of the biggest reasons for changing the name on the first place was to protect LO so I will continue to just power through until LO is old enough to make their own decision!

I changed the spelling of my sons name, which was an odd spelling of a common name. When I do letter box I just use the old spelling of his name, it feels odd but that’s the spelling she knows him by, my son knows she spelled his name differently so won’t be surprised when the time comes for him to read her letters/my letters to her.

Your DD is likely to have questions about her name when she’s older anyway so it should be easy to explain you use her now middle name because that’s how her birth mum knows her. She may well revert to using her birth name when she’s older anyway so I’d not be too worried about the discrepancy.

We have changed names for safety reasons, so I always use the old names in letterbox. It does feel odd, but my children know we changed their names, are fine with that and know their old names. My kids are teenagers now and it is still a non-issue.

Your daughter will be in their late teens or an adult when she reads the old letterbox letters - if she ever chooses to do so. She will know her story and ideally have a good understanding of why certain decisions were made. You made the smallest possible adjustment to her name; you only changed the order. Hopefullly she will be able to see that your intentions were the best possible.

We changed our LO name as it was incredibly unique and identifying. We only ever use it in letterbox as birth family will never know about the change for safety reasons. It is weird writing it but we know it's for the best x