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  1. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    24,521

    Default Re: Changing a Child's Name Back to the Birth Name

    I have a message for the OP.

    It’s not that we don’t understand how important a name can be. As a fiction writer, I know that if I change the name of a character, or even change the spelling of a name (example; Laurie vs. Lori; John vs. Jon) it can also change the character him or herself.

    But at the same time, the name is only what the character, or any of us, are called; they are not what we are. Your child will be raised with your guidance; your values; your precepts. That’s far more important that what he is called.

    At the age of two, he doesn’t understand what a last name is or what it means. He knows that his name is Billy, or David, or Yosef: if he has any inkling of a last name, which is uncertain at best, he doesn’t have any sense of the difference between being Billy Morris-Brown and Billy Brown. If he now begins to be called Billy Brown, he will soon forget (if he ever really understood) that his name was once Billy Morris-Brown. He will never know unless you tell him. And since many if not most of his friends growing up will have their father’s names, it will probably never cross his mind to ask why his name is not Morris-Brown.

    My only son has declared his intention of never marrying or having children. I doubt if he will follow through with that – he’s much too young to make that kind of decision for life – I believe he will change his mind. But if I’m wrong and he never does, that will be the end of my husband’s name through this family line since my brother in law has only girls. The line will continue through my daughter and my nieces, but they will be CALLED by the names of my daughter’s and my niece’s husbands. But again that is only the label – it is not who they are. Whatever they are called, they will still inherit from my husband and brother in law. They will still have the family blue eyes or that funny gap between the front teeth. They may still inherit my brother in law's skill as a cook; my husband's love of baseball. They will still get the intelligence and/or the stubbornness that are family traits. They may still inherit my husband's skill with words, or my brother in law's impatience. They will still have the (last name) family traits and values, even if they are CALLED (in-laws' name).

    When he is an adult your son can, if he so wishes, change his name back to the hyphenated form. Or he may not. But it doesn’t matter either way because what you give to him, as the primary parent who guides him through life, is far more important than the label by which he is known.

    I know that you're hurt at having your name removed from your son's. I know it feels as if you are being told your name, and your contribution to having made him, are not important. That's not true. In one sense, it's an acknowledgement of your importance; your son does not need your "name-label" to know the part that you will play in his life. You're already so much a part of it that it's not necessary to put that label on him. Mary Morris is irretrievably part of Billy's life - it's Bob Brown who needs to have the reminder added, since Bob Brown will have less to do with making Billy Brown into the person he needs to be, than Mary Morris will.

    Let this go. Let his father have this victory. It's such a narrow victory - you'll have so much more to do with forming Billy's personality and beliefs that he will. The label is just not important compared to that.

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