Elvis?
Hmm - Cindy suggested I name the baby that will be coming to live with us (as a foster child). I detest the phrase "foster child" - so many negative social stereotypes. I had referred to him/her as "Baby X" (meaning no disrespect - rather - an unknown being). Cindy - I agree - I need a name....Elvis? Hmm. Elvis did have glory days, but met a sad fate. I lived in Memphis - and went to Graceland. I just can't do "Elvis". My husband's initials are MIA. (Yes, missing in action.) And in some ways, a child is missing from our lives. So, I think I'll call him/her MIA. When I lived in Mexico, the father of the family I lived with would hug me and call me "Carina mia" (my dear in Italian). I liked that.On a more serious note, we talked in our Foster Parenting 101 class about some foster parents calling a child by a name other than it's birth name, or of adoptive parents changing a child's first and/or middle name as well as the child's last name at the time of legal adoption. The assumption was that this practice was mostly wrong. My husband, always the voice of dissent, if for no better reason that a good discussion, raised the question of whether there were times that changing a child's name was in the best interest of the child (and the child's future success). He argued well that your name is the first thing people see on a job application or resume, and the first thing you hear when someone introduces someone. Names carry a lot of meaning. And, like it or not, some heavy social assumptions and stereotypes. I imagine for similar reasons that referring to our child-to-be as "Baby X" doesn't sit well, nether do some other real-life baby names.
Take for example, two real-life children most unfortunately named "Orangejello" (pronounded oar-AHNG-elo) and "Lemonjello" (pronounced (lem-AHNG-elo). If you adopted these two boys, would you change their names? At what age is "too old" to change a child's name? What are the implications of a child carrying that name their entire life? My husband had read a book that recounted a story of a woman who had named her daughter "Temptress" - in an in-fated attempt to name her daughter after "that actress on the Cosby show"....hmm, that would be Tempest - as in storm. Oh boy. One of the leaders of our class said that she re-named the little baby she adopted, because the name was ...get this..."Amanda" - and, in her words, "She didn't look like an Amanda". On the other hand, another little girl she adopted had the birth name "Odyssey" (no, she didn't have a brother named Illiad - though that would have made the story much more interesting). And the woman LOVED that name - thought it was just beautiful. Now, it is unique, no doubt. But trashing "Amanda" (I can't recall what Amanda was re-named, but it was something akin to "Shaquita") and keeping "Odyssey" was an interesting choice. I guess it really is up to each family.
This leads my darling husband to take it one step further. In some ways, he's referring to a tendency in many African-American families to give the children Afro-centric names (that, most of the time, have no African origins whatsoever). He gets to go through life as "Michael", not Leroy, or Te Quan. He gets to send in a resume or apply for a job, or give his name over the phone without assumptions regaring race (and/or social class, intellect, capabilities, etc.) He brought up the recent trend in naming children "Espn" - yes, after the network ESPN. Oh dear. It seems that Mia will likely be getting a new name barring some surprising outcome that a loving mom or social worker saw fit to name the child something that could pass as professional, but zesty enough to carry him/her through a career in professional sports.
The book my husband has been reading is Freakonomics. I saw a blog about the book and the baby naming study here. Fascinating stuff, really. So, it's not the name as much as the parenting. No big shocker there, but it seems the two go hand in hand - you are named "Temptress", and your mother was the kind of woman who would name her child that. See where this goes?
Oh carina Mia, I hope you will not be named Temptress. But if you are, your father and I will love you even so. (He would add: And we will see to it you have a name unfit for an exotic dancer.)
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 8/05/2005 02:30:00 PM
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