A new post today by Meiling at Exiled Sister reminded me that I had previously intended to write a post about my angst about L’s name.   I also read this post she linked to which is critical of adoptive parents’ naming/renaming choices, which made me think this is probably a post that will draw some criticism, but I am going to share our story anyway.

Before we get started, please refer back to this post to see what we had originally decided and our reasoning when we adopted L.  Go ahead. I will wait a minute.

In an effort to make this very confusing issue less so, I am going to assign pseudonyms so you can see what the heck I was trying to say.  (To be clear, these are not L’s names, but they are similar in ease/difficulty of spelling, pronunciation etc. They probably don’t make sense as actual Chinese names.)

Let’s just say L’s orphanage name was Yu Qiuling (Yu being her family name). Qiuling was just an ok, but not really “good” chinese name according to native speakers.  We could live with that.  Mr. A was adament that we not keep the name Qiuling (pronounced Chee -Oh Ling.  Mispronounced as Queeeooooh by people not familiar with pinyin) as her primary name because it was hard to spell and pronounce correctly for most Americans.  I think he was also afraid it would mark her has a recent immigrant.  As the only adult Asian in our house and as the person who has experienced racism his entire life, I figured his opinion carried a lot more weight in this one vote than mine did.

At his behest, I chose a name like Rebecca.  We chose to keep her entire orphanage name, but switched the order in case she decided she wanted to hyphenate her family names.  We also gave her Mr. A’s family name.

We will say her name them became

Rebecca Qiuling Yu Lee

Right before we adopted her, but AFTER we filled out all our legal paperwork (which felt like the point of no return, but in retrospect probably could have been changed in China), we found out she was called Lingling, the diminutive of Qiuling.  You will see in the previous post, we both thought Lingling was a fine name.  Chinese, but easy to pronounce and spell.  We have never called her anything but Lingling. Lingling Lee is how everyone knows her.  She knows her full name, but doesn’t seem especially interested in her other names in any way shape or form.

Fastforward four years.  We locate her birth family.  The first things we found out about them was their names and their children’s names. Let’s say her father’s family name is Chu.   When we met them in person, we asked if they had chosen a name for L before she went to the orphanage.   They had.  The name shared the same generation name with her older sister (let’s call her Anming) and was a lovely name.   Let’s say they named L Anmei.

In the midst of all the overwhelming emotions and processing related to opening L’s adoption, her name loomed large.  What do we do now?

Should we take away her her orphanage name and replace it with her birth name?  Do we remove Rebecca (which she at age 5 neither cares about nor uses and for the record I could care less about myself because she is so very much a Lingling) and change it to Qiuling Anmei Chu Lee?  Qiuling Chu Lee? Or god forbid, Rebecca Qiuling Yu Anmei Chu Lee?  Lingling Anmei Lee?

I had always said I never wanted to take any names away from L, but it seems completely illogical to force the poor kid to have SIX names.

To add another level of complication, her birth family also knows her and refers to her as Lingling.  On the other hand, if we changed her name to include their name or names, it would be clear to them how important we feel her connection to their family is.

I know it sounds like a lot of angst over something that could be nothing, but it felt like such a huge overwhelming responsibility.   I lost many nights’ sleep trying to figure out what to do.

I finally had to decide to table thoughts of legally changing L’s name right now.  I just don’t know which ones will be the most meaningful to her in the future.  I hope she chooses to keep Mr. A’s family name in some way (hypenated? last name? Middle name?), because it means a lot to him, but most of all I just want her to be happy and comfortable with her names.

My current thought is that we set an age at which she can decide on her name and we can go through the legal process of changing it (if she wants to).   It would probably be easiest before she gets a driver’s license and other adult legal documents that would also need to be changed.  (She already has a passport, SSN etc. so it will definitely still require some work.)

What age?  13?  15? 16?  After she demonstrates a consistent desire one specific combination for 2 years?

I don’t know.

P.S. I know this doesn’t really address Meiling’s post or the issues she is facing at all.  Her post just reminded me that I meant to write about naming from my point of view.  In all of this overthinking, I always assume L will keep Lingling as her everyday name or maybe Anmei. I would actually prefer it if she chose those names.   If I had to choose the easiest name to drop, it would be Rebecca, the one name I actually chose myself, but maybe one day she will really want a solidly “american” name.  Argh. There is just no way to know what she will want.