Hello My Name is:

Boy what a personal choice, naming your child. In most cases you choose your child's name because its one you have been thinking about for years, you place your hopes, dreams and family honor in naming your kids. An even more complicated decision when naming an adopted child. Do you keep the their birth name? Did the birth family name the baby? Was it an orphanage name? (like baby #24 with mark on face) & yes some are named this way. What does the name translate to? Is it easy to pronounce? Will they be picked on in school? Will the name give them success in later years? Imagine if Oprah's name was Mable. Would she still be successful? Will it be a name easy to pronounce in the business world? Look good on a business card or will people struggle pronouncing it? Or all together just not say it in fear of saying it wrong.

In both of our prior adoptions we totally changed the names. Our daughters Chinese name did not translate to anything that gave honor to her. So we had a family member (whom is Chinese) help us pick a new Chinese name. Her new middle name is Mei Fei (May-Fay)which means beautiful and intelligent. A Chinese name keeps her link to her heritage. Our sons name translated also very plain and nothing special. His new Chinese name is En-Lai (in-lie) which is after a great ruler in China : Chu-En-Lai, he was very good to the Chinese people. So our son has a name after a great leader. He should be very proud of this later in life.

Now onto the American names. While I love trendy names and have fallen in love with many. I still have the opinion that naming your child, specially and adopted child ; the name should place your child on the family tree with a family name that links them there. This also announces to the child that they are included in our family history and demonstrates this to other family members. Our daughter was named after my middle name, which is also the name of another family member whom is also Chinese. Her American middle name is my husbands middle name. Our daughter truly loves hearing about how she was named after each of us. Our sons first name is my husbands name,and a version of his fathers Spanish name. His middle American name is after my deceased father.

Now for our 3rd and probably last child (you never know) he will also have a family name. It will be James, my grandpa was a James, my father was a James and my brother is a James. My brother had first dibs on using James, but he used it as a middle name for his middle child. So we will claim it as a first name for our 3rd child! His middle American name will be Carmen after my husbands late mother. We were saving this name for a girl, thinking that our current son would be a daughter but China surprised us! (there was 2 boys out of 59 babies referred that month). A great suprise for thinking we were expecting a girl. I had to sit down. Well anyway I hope this post has given you food for thought. Got to go check all my chat rooms. Peace for now.