What’s In A Name?

Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to see you. This morning I am drinking a decaffeinated green tea as I write to you. As an adopted person I feel it is important to open up a dialogue about adoption topics (and sometimes other topics too) that impact on so many of us. I write these blogs in the hopes that anyone else feeling what I feel will know that they are not alone, that they belong to a community of adopted people who feel like this too. Not all adopted people will relate to my blogs as our experiences are unique but I continue writing for those who do.


When I hear my son and daughter-in-law call my toddler grandson’s name I realize that it is not just his name, it is his identity to them, and to him. When they say his name they instantly remember the first time they saw him and held him, his first laugh, his first steps, and all his milestones. His name conjures up instant identity of him as their precious son. This applies to all of my grandchildren and their parents. Even sometimes when I call my own adult children by their names the same thing happens. I associate their personalities, their traits, and their unique characteristics with their names. Your name forms a big part of your identity, for you and for your family.


For my first 9 months of life, while I waited for a family of my own, I don’t know who, or even if, anyone called me by my original name. As an adult, I learned that my original given names were Yvonne Marie. When I mentioned my original names to her, one of my maternal half-sisters wondered if her/our mother had named me after two of the Dionne Quintuplets (a historical famous multiple birth that took place near Corbeil, Ontario) as birth mother had always been interested in their story. Also historically, many Catholic families used Marie as their child’s middle name. So it may have been a default given the home for unwed mothers my birth mother attended was operated by Catholic nuns.


I often wonder if the nurses who cared for me following my birth used my original name when trying to comfort me? It was weeks after my birth mother me left me behind at the ‘home for unwed mothers’ before a Children’s Aid worker finally came to get me, so I assume (hopefully) that the nurses called me something during that time while they cared for me. I can only hope that they smiled at me, held me, and interacted with me given that they were my only connection to humanity. I hope they used my name.


When, as an adult, I had the good fortune of meeting one of my former foster mothers, actually the last one before my adoption probation placement. When she opened her door she opened her arms and uttered, “my Marie”. My heart warmed in that moment. I’m not sure who dropped the Yvonne or when; adding to the list of things I’ll never know, but I cannot describe what it meant to me to know that she had called me by one of my original names during my time with her and her family. Referring to me by one of my original names made me a person, not simply an unwanted infant. It made me ‘someone’, not a something. 


Upon placement with my new family, my adoptive parents changed my name as was customary back then. They did not realize that it was essentially wiping out my first identity, they were simply claiming me as their own. To be fair my birth first name didn’t really go with my new surname. Also indicating that the name change was part of their claiming of me, I was named after the back half of my maternal grandmother’s name (she was Magdalene, pronounced ‘Magda-Lyn’). She was just Granny to me and her friends called her Maggie so I never really made the connection until one day when I asked my mom if I came to them already named, and if not, why she named me Lynn. I really loved my granny so I was honoured to have been sort of named after her. It made me feel, connected.


As you may be aware from other blogs, I required surgery upon placement with my parents. I feel a little sorry for baby me, in pain in a strange environment with a virtual stranger trying to comfort and care for me while likely calling me by my new name. I was not yet accustomed to my new name, nor likely comforted by hearing it. I don’t fault my mom for that, she was just so excited to have me as her daughter. No one talked about transitions, claiming, or attachment in those days. There was no training for pre-adoptive parents back then. My poor mom was winging it. I appreciate that she was doing her best, while also acknowledging the confusion baby me must have felt.


One day, when I was snooping in some of my parents’ papers I found my Adoption Order. I cannot describe how it felt when I discovered that my mom had carefully cut out my given names from the adoption papers. Once again, I felt erased. I could not imagine what it would hurt to have told me what I was named at birth. Mom always claimed she could not remember what my name had been before I came to them. As a result, I never knew my given birth names until way into adulthood when legislation changed and adopted folks started to be given some rights to information. When I learned my given names, it made me feel acknowledged, that I actually had existed before I was nine months old, that I was someone before I was even placed with my new family.


Years later, when I was an adoption worker, I was working with a birth mom who had made an adoption plan for her baby. When the baby girl was born, her birth mother did not want to name her as she felt it was the adoptive parents’ right to choose her name. While I agreed that her adoptive parents would likely change the baby’s name, I asked her if she would always want to think of her birth daughter as simply ‘baby girl’? I also asked her, if the day ever came that they might meet, wouldn’t she want to call her by a name she had given her? After thinking all of this over, she decided to give her baby a name. 


So when I think about my names, I think about the identities I have had for the people who gave them to me, or associated them with me, and realize that names are really part of the attachment process. We know that attachment can be short or long term depending on the circumstances, but calling someone by name makes them real, makes them a person, rather than a job or a commodity. When, or if, people think of me by whatever name they associate with me, my identity when they knew me, I am simply grateful and honoured to be remembered. 


Thank you so much for visiting with me today. I so enjoy your company and I hope you enjoy reading about my thoughts. As always, feel free to comment here or for more privacy, send me an e-mail at [email protected]. 
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