The Power of Naming

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

God gave Adam dominion over all the creatures, and as evidence of that dominion, Adam was asked to name all the animals (and name Eve, too). This passage is frequently used by some religions to argue that women cannot be priests, and is often pointed to by feminists as proof of patriarchy – the pervasive culture of dominion of MAN over all creatures, including woman. Because the power of naming is dominion – control, authority, mastery.

I studied this passage from the Bible in college, both in theology classes and women studies classes (I was a member of the “Major of the Week Club” there for a while in college!). I’ve taught about the power of naming in my Women & the Law class and Feminist Jurisprudence seminar.

So what does this Biblical story have to tell us about naming in adoption? How about this? We name that which we wish to control. By naming, we assume a blank slate. We act like no identity exists until we name. Once the child is seen as a blank slate, it is easier to see the child as made for us, to have no purpose except to satisfy our needs. This is the significance of Adam naming the animals, and this is the danger in naming children born to us; it’s a bigger problem in naming children whose life began before we met.

There’s a softer side to naming as “dominion,” isn’t there? It's naming as claiming, about belonging instead of control, I think. For adoptive parents, naming the child is one of the first acts of claiming her as “your own.” Bestowing on the child a family name especially – naming her for your favorite aunt, using the traditional family name given to oldest sons – can be a mark of belonging. Sometimes not doing that seems odd (don’t you think it’s a little strange that the only children Angelina Jolie named after relatives are her biological children?!).

But the problem with naming as claiming is that it can seem like a rejection of all that came before, an erasure of the child’s pre-adoption identity and a rejection of birth culture and country, even a rejection of birth parents. For many adoptive children, that first name is the only link they have to their past, the only thing that they can claim as their own. Rejection of that first name is rejection of identity, isn't it? We're back to the blank slate, those animals we had no words for until Adam spoke their names.

Naming can also be a re-claiming. Feminist discussions of naming focus on reclaiming the power of naming, the power to define one’s own existence on one’s own terms. Giving a name to a condition or experience can make it real. Until women named the experience “sexual harassment,” for example, there was no language to talk about that icky thing your boss did to you at work and no way to claim any legal injury from it.

Some adoptees choose to reclaim their former names – the names given by birth parents, reflective of family, the names given by orphanage workers, reflective of home country and culture. I imagine that some adoptive parents might see this as rejection – but then perhaps the adoptive parents will be able to use that reaction to identify with the adoptee’s feeling that erasing a previous name amounted to rejection of what came before. Or if they believe their naming was a claiming and not a rejection, then they can simply see the adoptee’s action as reclaiming, not rejection.

All of this philosophical rambling actually went into my process of naming my children. I understood the power of naming in a theoretical sense, but the power of naming – the real POWER of it – became real to me when I named my children. Like many adoptive parents, I tried to strike a balance.

I gave each girl an “American” first name, names given for no other reason than that I loved them – Zoe and Maya. With these names, I claimed them as my own. Zoe means life, and Maya means a divine spark. Though I claim them, I do not claim dominion; these names recognize them as individuals in their own right. Human life with a divine spark.

I also gave each girl a French name, in recognition of their French grandmother. So they are Zoe Elisabeth and Maya Noelle. Maya’s first middle name, Noelle, is because I found out on Christmas Eve that my agency had a singles slot for me so I would be able to submit an dossier to China. With French names, I claimed them as belonging to a larger family. And more than two given names are quite common in France, so more names rather than fewer is consistent with my heritage.

My children came to me with names given to them by the orphanage director, names that followed the particular naming convention of their orphanage. When I received the referral of my younger daughter, I knew immediately she came from the same orphanage as her big sister because of the naming convention. In fact, I argued with the social worker when she told me my daughter was from a different orphanage. It turns out we were both right – Maya was found and named at one orphanage, and then transferred to another!

So my girls had a shared beginning, and they shared the surname Jin, a surname selected for all children there because the orphanage was near JinTiancum, the site of a famous peasant rebellion. Jin means gold.The girls from the orphanage during a certain period – when my oldest was there – are named Jin Something Ling. Then the director changed to a new naming convention – Jin Something Li – when my youngest was there. So my daughters were Jin YiLing and Jin BingLi. (And anyone reading from their orphanage can identify the orphanage immediately by knowing these names -- ah, a larger sisterhood).

I kept YiLing and BingLi as part of their new names. I wish I’d kept Jin, too, but at the time I didn’t know I’d have a second daughter, much less that she’d be from the same orphanage. I wish they had the name connection now, not just then, but I’d already dropped it for YiLing by the time BingLi entered our lives.

I kept their Chinese names in recognition of their heritage and their country of birth. I know some think an orphanage-given name isn’t worthy of being kept, that only with a birth parent- given name is there a reason to retain it. But I believe the connection to their heritage is important, that the connection to their orphanage is worthy.

There’s another reason I kept their Chinese names – it’s so it will be easy for them if they wish to use their Chinese names exclusively. If they wish to reclaim their birth country, their heritage, their identity in that way, then I’ve at least made it quite possible for them to do so. They do use their Chinese names at times – Zoe was exclusively Jin YiLing at her kindergarten when we lived in China for five months, and they both use their Chinese names at times at Chinese School. (Zoe’s power of naming causes her to write the Chinese characters for her name in permanent marker on all sorts of things she shouldn’t!)

So my daughters are Zoe Elisabeth YiLing and Maya Noelle BingLi. Named and claimed in love and belonging. No blank slates, their heritage reclaimed in that given and retained Chinese name.

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NAMES -- the topic of this month's blog carnival at Grown in My Heart. Go there to read other takes on the topic, and blog your own post about names and go there to link it. I've posted before about naming -- What's In a Name? and Naming (about "milk names" in China).