So, what do Eric and I do late at night when we can’t do anything with the adoption process??? Glad you asked….we broach the subject, once again, about whether or not we’re going to change our son’s name. Part of us would really like him to keep his birth name so that we’re not stripping away one of the last things he can hold on to. The other part of us knows after researching names that there are very few African names that we can properly pronounce and we want to make life in the US as easy as possible in school and life, not more difficult. We’ve decided to revisit our options once we get a referral and see how hard his name is to pronounce. If it’s easy, we’ll keep it for sure. If not, we’ll give him an American sounding name and move his birth name to his middle name.
I’m amazed at how many names are out there on the Internet Baby Names lists. Tonight I went to a site that not only lists names, but also gives their meaning and their country of origin, and if it’s a male or female name or both. Woo hoo. That will help us weed out the he/she names. The meaning of a name means a lot to me along with the fact that we believe our children should have strong names that sound good when they’re little, in middle school, high school, entering the world of work, as a parent and also as a grandparent. We also wanted a name that wouldn’t have a nickname. That limits the options as well as being ‘mature in age’ parents we’ve know a lot of people in our lifetimes and have mental thoughts that come to mind with most names, either good or bad. If nothing else, the exercise gave Eric and I a good laugh when remembering people from our past, and present, with some of the names on the list.
The big guy and I narrowed the list down to 7 names. That’s pretty good for two opinionated parents! We’ll see what we think of the names tomorrow when we’ve slept on it.