Names are important to Josh and I.
It takes us FOREVER to come up with baby names, and after one of my best friends gave birth to a little boy after being promised that it was a girl, I never 100% believe the ultrasound technician when they tell us either way. We always have a back-up name "just in case":)
So, choosing a name for our Ugandan daughter has been no different.
Yes, she already has a name. A beautiful name! We are used to calling her by her birth name.
We have checked with reliable sources, thanks Andrew, to find the background and meaning to her birth name. It means, "Lively Life". A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. MY little girl!
*sigh*
But to us, we are bringing her into a new family. A new life. A new season.
You know when a new convert from the Muslim religion to Christianity changes their Muslim name to a Christian name? Well, that is kind of how I am looking at it.
We are bringing her out of her Orphan state and giving her a loving family. She is going to become ours.
Honestly, I've kind of struggled with the whole name changing thing, for some reason. I guess I just felt like we were changing enough on her all at once, and changing her name was something that was hers. Something that was familiar that she could hold on to.
But after Josh spoke his feelings toward the name change to me I've agreed that this is important to the whole transition into our family.
We've always loved the name we chose and are still working on a middle name, wanting to stick with her heritage and roots somewhere in there. So now we are trying to mentally make the transition from thinking of her as Shabila to our Alethia.
Alethia is Greek for Truth, and we pray that she will know the Truth and that she will boldly shine the light of that Truth to others!
5 comments:
The name changing issue in adoption is such a *touchy subject*. But I firmly believe families should do what is best for them and their adopted children - whether its to keep the name, change it, change the spelling, ect.
We chose to just change the boys middle names but change the spellings as they knew their names - and with their developmental delays - changing their first names would confuse them a lot - and we've known them for two years as Kaden and Isaiah. Anyway, on the foster care adoption board parents who chose to change their foster-adopt children's names a lot of the time start calling them both names like Alethia Shabila. Then after a few weeks drop the name they are dropping to help the child *understand* what their name is.
:)
I love it! Beautiful!!!
Love it!! I cannot wait to see little Alethia again and welcome her to her new family!
Abbey, that is a GREAT idea. I still hadn't figured out how to go about that transition:)
I just met a woman who has a daughter with the same name! I'd never heard it before - I love the meaning :) So excited for you guys!
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