how old or young can a child be for you to change their name when you adopt?
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at
9:14 pm
My wife and I have a beautiful baby girl and we are already thinking of the next child. We want to adopt and possibly adopt a boy. We would also like to get a child who is a little older since people tend to forget about them. However we have a boy’s name that obliviously did not get used and would like to change our adopted child’s name to it. How old is too old to change a name. I know if you get an infant you can change it because they have not began to recognize it yet.
Filed under: Adopt A Child
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"Stop! Struggling to Find the Right Answers to Your Questions About Adopting A Child or Baby"
When you formally adopt a child, regardless of the age, you have an opportunity to change the name in the courtroom. The judge will ask you on the record what name will the child have from that day forward. It is then put on the birth certificate.
I was adopted at seven, and I changed my name then. My adopted brother was Nine.
You can change it now~
Consider doing your adopted child a favor. If you do change his name, let him keep his original perhaps as a middle name. This will give him the sense that he recieved something from his birth mother – that she cared to name him. That’s important.
I think that it would depend on the child and their age. It might be upsetting for a child to lose everything familiar even their name. But on the other hand if you are taking them out of a bad situation they may be happy to have a new name. I think it might depend too on where their name came from. Is it all they have left from parents who died, or were they just abandoned and then given a name by some orphanage. You might have to compromise. Maybe you could combine the two names.
well anything older then 1 yr old i think that would just be wrong to change there name they have gone thru enough changes in there life….
Legally you can change it the DAY the adoption is final. My opinion would be that any age between 6-12 would not be right to change the first name at least. The child doesn’t understand everything fully, and plus with all the problems I am sure the child faced, taking away his identity may not be a good idea. Over 12 though, a child would realize a new home, and new family and would probably deal better with it. Good Luck!
Perhaps change the name but add it at the front of the childs name so his original becomes his middle name. You can explain that its a new name to show that hes having a new life with you and your family.
You can change their name at the time of adoption regardless of age, or any time thereafter. It may take some time for the child to respond to being called something different than they are used to, but that is a normal process.
I was adopted back in 1957 when birth records were sealed by court order and new birth certificates with the adoptive parents information replaced them. Some people were never told they had been adopted at all.