What's in a name?

After people hear that we are adopting, they want to know our child's age, and then name... and then immediately ask "are you going to change it?"

Adoption -- joining a new family -- is a change.  We wish we could protect her heart from all the losses that she has already faced, and will soon face when she leaves her homeland and everything she knows, but there is change implicit.  And we will need to change her name in some ways.

But not take it away.

As far as we know, she has a given name, Rehema, and a family name (which I won't post on-line).  Based on different names we've seen, we don't know if this is first and last in a parallel tradition to what we have here, or if there is any more to her name.  We have seen her first name spelled different ways, and when we saw a video of her, the caregivers rolled the R, made the H gutteral, and put the accent on the second syllable: re-CHAY-mah.

We want to honor the name she has, for several reasons.  First of all, she recognizes it as meaning herself (at least we hope she will be able to recognize our pronunciation!!).  Enough is going to be confusing to her; we want to keep something that she recognizes!  Secondly, it is a gift that her birthmother gave to her; probably the only thing that she can keep through her life from her birth mother.  Thirdly, it is something representing her country and her heritage.  For instance, we can make a guess that she is from the Muslim minority, and hopefully we will be able to learn more about the significance of her name when we are in Uganda.

But she will be a child with two countries, and so part of her name will also reflect her second country -- ours.  Certainly, we will change her last name to ours, to signify that we are all part of the same family.

We also want to give her a middle name.  Hopefully, this will give her options of who she wants to be, and when.  (Our son is also called by his middle name, but sometimes identifies as his first name, so we already have a family tradition of using different names.)  She could be called by her first name and her middle name flowing together; she could use either name on its own.  She might decide that there are times she wants to blend in with other American kids (at least with her name) and there might be times when she wants to let everyone know she is African.  She might be like Little Elizabeth in the Anne of Green Gables series, who calls herself different variations of her name depending on her mood!  Her middle name should be able to add to her choices and her growing sense of herself, but not take away from it.

Hopefully, the name we use for her will sound familiar, seem beautiful to her, reflect the value of the life she has lead before coming to our family, and also her inclusion in our family.


Meanwhile, Mark and I have to find something we agree on!!