There's an interesting discussion over on the openness in foster care and foster adoption forum on adoption.com today. The discussion is about changing your foster adopt child's name, and then communicating it with the birth mom.

Would you, or did you, change your foster child's name after adoption? If you know the birth parents or bmom,do you tell them? How does the birth family deal with it? Better or worse than you expected?

I guess there are a lot of opinions about it. Some moms have changed every child's name after adoption, and others haven't. One mom changed each of her five kids names, but had different responses from the birth family, and in one instance, didn't tell birth mom that she changed the childs name.

This has got to be one of those ‘depends upon the situation' answers.

This is what I wrote on the forum about our situation:

We adopted our daughter and kept her birth first name. I thought it was a very weird name - bmom made it up, and I always thought I'd change it, but after fostering her for a year and calling her by that name, well, we just kept it after the adoption went through. We did change her middle name, but I"ve never had the heart to tell birth mom that we changed it. Bmom LOVES the middle name she gave her, which was even weirder....

Some of the foster kids that lived with us had strange names as well. Or at least names I'd never choose. In a couple of instances, I gave the child a nickname and stuck with it. Nicknames can be terms of endearment and I certainly used it as one. In the presence of bio family, as a foster parent I always used the given name, but in private it was intimate to have a 'special name' for this one particular kid I am thinking about. I'm sure birth mom wouldn't have liked me having nickname for her kid though.

Once a child did shout at me "that's not my name - don't call me that" when I gave her a name like pumpkin, or sweety or something like that. I don't remember exactly the name I tried, but the message was clear, I wasn't close enough to her to be giving her a nickname.

I know this can be a touchy subject - I wouldn't want anyone changing MY name, just because I went to live elsewhere. No matter what my circumstances, I think I'd want to keep my name. Perhaps there is a certain reverence that happens when a child takes on a birth given name, and their identy is wrapped up in their name - but maybe that is also a good reason to change it. If there has been abuse or abandonment perhaps a child would like to change their name, but I bet that isn't usually the case.

I think most kids are proud of their names. Even if, and even when......

Older kids have been known to want to change their name after adoption to start with a clean slate.

Maja talked elequently about her choice as a birth parent for choosing a name for her baby in her post, She has the realistic perspective that adoptive parents might change the name a birth parent gave, but I know reactions are mixed from birth parents and this can be an explosive subject.

Hummm...... comments?