One strange fact about my life is that no one has ever been able to figure out *what* I am based on my name. My first name is basically made up and my last name is probably English -- my husband is the classic American-European mix. My maiden name was actually Ukranian, though in spelling it looked like it could have been Japanese. Suffice it to say, I had my fair share of people asking me "Uh, what are you?" in varying degrees of politeness. This is common to most adoptees, and it never really bothered me and still doesn't. I actually think it's nice that people don't know what race I am when I'm on the telephone or if I send in an application.
My father-in-law was recently telling me about a man he had met several years ago with the last name of Washington, who changed his last name, asking my father-in-law "Have you ever met a white person with the last name of Washington?", so when I saw this article online yesterday, I immediately recalled his story.
As we get close to welcoming our third child into the world, we are still discussing names. Last night we realized that both children had the same number of letters in their first names, and half-jokingly said that we should continue with that? I have been a proponent of "regular" names, having a name that I could never find on a magnet, sticker, etc. when I was young and a name that was constantly misspelled by one letter. My brother had it worse -- he has a seemingly normal name that has a letter missing that is common to 99% of the people with his name! So he & I have always vowed to spell our children's names normally.
What do we want people to think about our child when they first hear their name? Because of his/her last name, they will automatically presume that our child is white. My daughter has a Korean middle name and I'm thinking that I might want to give this child my maiden name. But as far as first names, I'm stumped. Chris & I haven't been able to agree on anything thus far. Oh well, neither of our other kids had names picked out until the week before they were born!
2 comments:
Names are hard! We figure that Evan's name represents the Japanese side of the family, and Corrie's name represents the Southern part. We did a family name for both kids' middle names, and both first names have 4 letters. I enjoyed those online baby name places that let you search by the meaning of the name, too. After finding out our first choice for girl's name meant "bitter unlucky," I became more interested in the meanings. Looking forward to hearing what you choose!
I always had fun picking out names for our kids, which show the "P" in my Myers-Briggs, enjoying having all the options in front of me. I really wanted to choose names for our girls that could be shortened into nicknames -- I always wished for a nickname when I was growing up. That helped us land on Lucia (Lucy) and Rosalind (Rosie). Happy name-hunting to you and Chris!
Post a Comment