For adoptees a name can be a toughy subject... to change or not change... there's those who might seem to want to do it but don't do it for some reason... Then there's those who go through it...
As for me a Korean adoptee living and raised in Sweden I thought that it was quite common to make a legal name change... But I later learned that most adoptees (in Sweden) didn't prefer to keep their adoptive parents surname instead most of them replaced or reclaimed their original surnames ...
Maybe I was naivë or just plain stupid, but no I don't regret it what I would like is that people wouldn't assumme so much about me based solely on my apperance.
Since I started blogging I've discovered a few adoptees that has gone through the same thing as I did (the legal process) although this probably isn't identical for every country.
Amanda writes about her own experience here as well as Mei - Ling and Thequeenofdenial ... I'm convinced there are more adoptees out there who may or may not blog,write or talk about their name change . But these two are the once I so far know of.
What really inspired me to write this entry besides the bloggers already mentioned was a discussion in the Birth Mother's Forum some time ago...
What's in a name ? A name is usually chosen by a child's parents but there's supposedly more or less possible for youngsters and adults to change their names. But what happens if it is an adoptee who wants to reclaim a lost name ?
It does seem to pose as a valid threat for adoptive parents, regardless of the adoptee's reason to initiate a name change... But regardless of which it does look like not even a name change would be able to overcome and overwrite years of separation (from the birth family) because in the end it is the adoptive parents that most likely knows the adoptee the best.
But sadly but not surprisingly, I do realize that in hindsight it most take a real dose of courage and determination to actually finalize a name change. I don't think my adoptive parents thought that much about it (since I had been talking about it for about a little less than 10 years) so I don't think they actually were threatened by it at first...
Maybe they thought she's just having another one of those ideas it's that kind of day today... When I finally said that I would go through with it my adoptive parents showed my no support, none at all. Fact is that that they even questioned if I was prepared to pay several thousands for a sentence on a piece of paper. My mum also made it clear for me that I would have to use my own savings if I really wanted to go through with it...
Here's the thing I first started talking about changing the spelling on my Swedish personal name (the name my adoptive parents gave me) that decision was one that my adoptive parents gladely would support. Prior to this I had only mentioned reclaiming my Korean name, I hadn't mentioned anything about my other name. When I finally did my dad and grandmum were the ones that objected the most, why should I have to be so difficult and change the name my adoptive parents gave me (I don't think I changed it I only replaced my Swedish personal name with a more internationally recognized version of the same it even had same meaning as my previous name did).
I remember my grand mother starting to talk about my grand father how happy he had been when he became grand parent, how proud he was of me and so on. Then she finally objected with teary eyes that I was Swedish so there shouldn't be no reason for me to change my name. But you see, even though I love my grand mother in this case I do believe she was wrong...
There should be nothing wrong with me wanting to honour my birth parents, country and culture which I would be doing by reclaiming my birth name. But even today Swedes are sometimes threatened by other Swedes of different ethnicities than a name change is not exactly making things any better. I'm proud to be Korean because I was born there and maybe I should have been raised by my birth parents... I want my personal name to reflect my new identity and I would like to have my Korean name on my tomb stone one day (strange argument perhaps) and I'd like my new name to be used instead of the name my adoptive parents insisted of naming me.
I must say that I very early on considered telling my birth family about my name change (my adoptive mum suggested that I shouldn't have to tell them) that's just the thing they havn't been around for that long in my life and I do feel like I want them to hopefully get some kind of sense of exactly how important they are to me. So in the end I ended up telling them about my name change but the reaction that I recieved was to honest not what I had expected. My birth family's answer was that I shouldn't change my name (why I still don't know they could have been afraid that I resented my adoptive parents, or maybe they're proud to have a younger sibling in Europe and by replacing/changing my name it wouldn't be as obvious).
To this day I still don't know why my birth family reacted so strongly to a decision that I thought would make them feel proud... I think I might have understood my birth family's reaction better if I had decided to change my surname instead of my personal name...
In my case the surname I was born with back in they was shared with approximately 29631364 people since my surname from birth belonged to one of the four most common surnames (which would be either Young, Lee, Park or Kim and with different spellings and pronounciation). Now you all know not only my original surname but also the surname of my birth father and siblings...
When I was adopted I ended up becoming the child to two Swedes with one Sweden's most common surnames. (Which would coincidentally consists of 15 Swedish surnames known as patronomicums that would be Andersson, Bengtsson, Eriksson, Gustafsson, Hansson,Jansson, Johansson, Jonsson, Karlsson, Larsson, Nilsson, Olsson, Persson, Pettersson, and Svensson) which would make me one out of 1802277 Swedes... After an adoption you instantly becomes a part of the adoptive family and thus generally gets a new surname (the adoptive parents). Because of adoption the surname which changed reflects the adoption in a nutshell (you're no longer a member of your birth family). So I suppose changing the surname (although it seems to be the most common name change for adoptees) it might also be seen as the ultimate betrayal in the adoptive parents eyes...
Would you as an adoptee consider honouring your birth culture or birth parents by giving them appropriate names from that culture or maybe name your child after one of your birth parents ? If you had to choose would you pick your birth parents names or your adoptive parents names?
Some questions (for KADs only) have you given you're child (if you have any) a Korean name too besides it's legal name , (given that the legal name isn't Korean...) Or do you plan to give your future children a Korean name too?
© Taste of Kimchi, Elle
Related posts:
Adoption Swedish Style
Rebirth
Dual Citizenship
Patrynomic Names
Adoption Day
Here I Come
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