It can help include us or help us stand out. It can trap us or liberate us. It defines us.
In North America it's pretty standard to name your child at birth, if not while the infant still floats happily within the womb. In fact, anything but that seems odd to many, if not most, North Americans.
I have friends that took around 8 days to name each of their children after the births. Can you imagine!? I used to think this was ludicrous. Then I was pregnant with my older son and we decided firmly on his name in pregnancy and changed it just before he was born. Still I considered myself within the 'normal limits' of name changing rights. Yes I told everybody he was 'Max', but surely because he was not yet born changing his name to 'Jasper' wasn't such a big deal. The ease in which my older son's name changed was not the case for my second son. Talk about unconventional, my partner and I have only just settled on a name for our son and he is almost 1 year old.
Apparently the need to rename your child is called "Baby-name remorse". Considerably more common then one suspects. Certainly unusual by standard practice of naming your baby, but in the larger scheme of things it is less unusual then many may think. I came upon a few stories on the internet about baby-name remorse and even a few personal stories by parents who went through with the out of the box renaming of their child. Hell, even some celebrities have been guilty of this seemingly shocking act! In fact in my own circle of friends there is a couple who renamed their 10 month old adopted child. Though typically this seems to be more acceptable in society then renaming your biological child. Whether adopted or not, there are many reasons why one might decide to change their child's name. These reasons span from just not liking the name that was originally chosen to suddenly realizing that the child does not suite the name originally chosen at all. In between you have varying degrees of reasons, the name you chose is too popular or perhaps you were having trouble bonding with the baby and couldn't commit to any name until you did bond. Whatever the reason, and there are too many to list, the fact remains that name changing isn't a new occurrence; at least 10% of parents asked would change their child's name if they didn't feel such a stigma associated with it.
And stigma there is. So cringing, I will admit that I have been the one struggling and unsettled with my baby son's name for the last 18 months. I say 18 months because this indecisiveness has been going on since the moment we found out the gender of our unborn son and began discussing the name choices. I thought we were on the ball. Ok, so maybe we were having issues agreeing on a name, but surely we would agree by the time he was ready to be born right?! Wrong. We passed names back and forth. My partner hated the unique and unusual names I liked. I despised the traditional and classic names he suggested. Finally at the birth I swallowed my unsure feelings and we named him Angus Griffith Asher. A name we both settled on but didn't love. However, as is typical, unsure feelings have a tendency to bubble back up.
When he was three months old we wanted to rename him Finnegan. My partner and I had each discovered the name from a character on a popular Canadian tv show called Mr. Dressup. We had not only had seriously considered it during our pregnancy, but it was really the only name that we had agreed on and both loved. When we looked at him we recognized it as *his* name, he was Finnegan. However a promise made to a (now) ex-friend about not using that name (should she ever decide to have kids) kept us from it. Had that promise never been, he would have definitely been Finnegan from the beginning with never a name change to come upon him.
Because we *couldn't* use Finnegan we then went through a few more names and even actively changed his name to the ones we liked (not legally, but instead by announcing it to others and calling him by it). None of the names we tried seemed to fit just right. I started to think that maybe it wasn't just about names that we liked, but more about whether I was bonding with this baby as I should be. I started to look at names that had a connection to my history and culture. My other kids had Hebrew names; therefore I decided that must be the problem. If the others had Hebrew names (technically Jasper is only Hebrew when pronounced 'Yashphey') then by all means so too should this child in order to be properly connected to this family. Well, I realize now that at the time nothing would have worked. His name was Finnegan in my heart and nothing but that would suffice. I was having trouble bonding to this child, that's true (he was our happy accident baby), but I believe in part due to the fact that my promise to my friend kept me from giving him the name I so strongly felt he should have. A name that we loved so much that we suggested it to our other friends for their baby just to see it used (they decided on another name). A name that not only fit him, but that created a stronger bond between my partner and I. We both loved this name, a big feat for us with our vastly different tastes in names.
By the time he was 7 months old I thought I had finally found him a proper name (the name Finnegan notwithstanding). We decided to change his name to Levi. It was a name we had previously considered and one that I really liked. My partner didn't love it, and I didn't love the sound of the name on my tongue when I heard myself saying it (I kept playing with how I would pronounce it, Lee-vy or Leh-vee). However it did fit most of my terms for a name. It had a beautiful meaning "united" and was from the Hebrew origin (a way for me to honour my history and culture). And for a brief time, about 3 months, it worked. My partner grew to like it and we started to see him as a 'Levi'. Two of my children were still stuck on Angus, but my 7 year old had made the switch seamlessly. It might not have sounded right at first (we were pretty used to the name Angus at that point since we had gone back to using it as a default name) and it might have sounded wrong out of the mouths of others; still, we liked the name. Levi was his name. It had to be because I was feeling an enormous amount of pressure from myself to commit to a name already! The humiliation I was feeling at not conforming by not fitting in with the 'norm' of naming my baby 'right' the first time was getting to me. I was being mocked and questioned. And, although I am a sensitive type, I was actually more concerned for my partner and children. They were visibly irritated and embarrassed. So I decided I just had to commit to this name. Still I couldn't shake the feeling that I was cheating him and myself and my partner out of the name we had always thought was right for him. A name that, in those long 10 months, had never even been brought up with our other friends and family as an option because of the promise we had made.
Now at 10 and a half months old, he is certainly not without *a* name, but instead with many, many names. All the names that were considered along the way have stuck in one way or another. And he's been "officially" renamed 4 times. All but Finnegan, the name we wanted but didn't use. It's evident to my partner and I now that the reason we never actually sent through the forms for the legal name change (that is ridiculously easy in the province of Ontario) is because we really weren't ever truly committed to those other names, try as we might. Of course with the promise of not using the name 'Finn' now null and void since the (unrelated) very final disintegration of my friendship to my then best friend we are finally free to choose the name we have always wanted for our son.
So, holding our breaths and diving into the raging waters of stigma (we've been wading in it up to our hips for a while now) we reintroduce you for the 5th and legally binding time to Finnegan Levi Angus Griffith.
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