Liam approached me a few weeks back with an interest in changing his name. Yep his first name, the one we gave him with much thought and debate. Chris and I have two of the most common names of the 70s. I didn't go a single year in school without another Jennifer in my class and usually there were at least 4 of us. In choosing our children's names we decided to go less common. Seamus is not too different but certainly he is not likely to meet too many in his life, Eoin is a pretty common name with a less common spelling. The name Liam though has become quite popular and if he were in school he would no doubt be the one of a few "Liams". His issue though is not that his name is too common or not common enough but because he likes the other name better.
What name does he want, you ask? He would like to use the name William. Wait let me rewrite that in case you miss it, Wil-LIAM. I am not sure how putting the "Wil" infront of "Liam" makes it better but he feels that it suits his personality better. Maybe it sounds older to him? Being older is something that has been his focus since he was wee. We used to joke that we had a 2 year old teenager. Liam has always wanted to be beyond his years. William definitely sound 'older' than Liam.
So what do you do when your child wants a different name? ...........Are you waiting for an answer? No that was a question, I am asking you! What do you do when your child wants to change his name? I can't figure it out.
Chris has tried this past week to fill Liam's request and has called him "William" a number of times. It just sounds weird. I have tried but goodness I can't say it feels right. We have done a lot of talking about what a name means over the past couple years in terms of adoption and how important birth or given names are to a child's identity and here our child by birth is wanting to shed the name we gave him and identify with something else.
I am pretty sure it won't last long but we are doing our best to help him try it on for a while. If he had asked us to call him "George" or "Dustin" or anything other than a longer form of his given name we would have balked a bit more about the name change no doubt. I think it is time though to pull out a book that we have called "Josephina Hates Her Name" by Diana Engel. Maybe together we can figure out what's in a name.
Well, I can honestly say I identify with the kid. :) I hate my name - always have. It's definitely uncommon. No one knows how to spell it, no one can pronounce it when they see it written (I really didn't think it was THAT hard!), and if I hear one more comment along the lines of "oh, you mean like the Muslim holy book" I might just scream. I don't remember how it came up at mom and dad's when we were there, but in the context of a conversation I made the comment that I've always hated my name. Mom just looked at me and said, "you're an adult...change it if you don't like it - it's YOUR name". And you know, she's right. They may have given it to me, but it is MY name. It's not a gift if you give it with strings attached. I could go and change it, and I'd still be the same person.
ReplyDeleteBy that thinking, you gave him the name - but it's HIS name. Should he be allowed to legally change it at this point - that's your decision. But if he wants to be called another name - go for it. Call him William if it makes him happy. Over time it will probably start to seem less strange. Will the "new name" last? Who knows. It could be a phase he's going through that passes and he'll be back to Liam. It could be that he'll realize what a pain it is to try and change your name (remember the hassle when you got married? And that was just your last name!) and decide it's not worth it. Or, he could be happy that way and end up changing it "for real" when he's older.
Ultimately, it's up to you and Chris. But it might be a case where the less of an issue you make of it, the sooner it passes. :)
(and no, I've not changed my first name - mostly because of the gigantic hassle it would be to do it. Changing my last name was enough of a pain (and it's still not completely done - I still need to make it in to Service Canada to change my social insurance card). For that matter, I go by both my maiden name and my married name at work solely because it's easier to use my maiden name than to change my work email address but I'm so used to saying/writing my married name that I do it by default.)
You know, I never connected your name with that holy reference.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for that perspective. I particularly like the reference to a name not being a gift if it has strings attached.