Adoption Support at Forever Parents

Adopting An Infant And Choosing Their Name

I recently asked this question to our members at the Forever Parents adoption forums:For those who adopted an infant through domestic adoption, how much input did the biological mother have on your choosing a name for your child?

Out of the eight replies, the results were;
* The bio. mother chose the name and I had no input 0
* I chose the name and the bio. mother had no input 5
* I chose the name along with the bio. mother 0
* We chose their name but the bio. mother agreed 2
* We changed their name after the bio. mother chose one 1

Some of our members also had this to say:

** The bio. mother had picked out “Savannah.” We chose a name that starts with T (we made it up). She really like that, too, and the fact that it “goes with” her son’s name.

** We met with our girls’ birthmom a week before they were born (she had chosen us a week before that). She asked what we were planning on for names. We told her and she liked them, but never told us what she would have chosen if she parented. I got the distinct impression from her that she felt like it wasn’t “her place” to choose their names since she wasn’t planning on parenting - but I didn’t ask and she didn’t offer.

** From the start the bio. mother has said she was ours and we should pick the name.

** In most of our cases with domestic adoption, we were told of names the bio mother had chosen—either on her own, or because a caseworker told her it might be a good idea. In all cases, we changed the names.

** When we met the placing mother, she said that it was very important to her for the baby to have a name on his birth certificate. She did not want to name him after his birthfather, so she said that, if we would tell her the name that we had chosen, she would put that name on his original birth certificate. She liked the name, and we have been told that she did use our name choice for his original birth certificate.

** We chose the name, although we didn’t have a middle name picked out when we met our daughter’s birth mother. We liked her so much (and still do!) that my husband and I quickly agreed we wanted to honor her by giving the baby her name as a middle name, if she was a girl. Her birth mother was moved to tears when we told her that’s what we were going to name the baby (after we found out it was a girl). We never even expected a birth mother to give us input in that decision, but I’m glad she seems to like the name.

Related Tags: adoption, adoptive parenting, adoptive parents

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5. Paid For Choosing Adoption