1) My name has part of my Korean name mixed with American. I like my name and feel comfortable with it. Growing up it would have been harder if I had my Korean name. For example, in my daughter’s class she has a boy with a Korean name. Some of the kids have a hard time pronouncing it and other make fun of it. I know it would have been hard for me growing up if they used my Korean name. What’s interesting to me now is how people expect me to have a more Asian sounding name vs. an American name. Many people are not only surprised when they first meet me and I don’t speak with an accent, but that my name is just JoLynn.

2) Interesting question…but I have no idea what my life would be like. People automatically assume that it would have been worse or horrible if I wasn’t adopted and brought to the US, but I’m not so sure. I mean who can really say? However, it also doesn’t mean I haven’t had a good life here with family & friends that love me. I do tend to think about having sisters & brothers out in the world and not being able to find them. I also recognize that I am missing a part of my culture…self that I cannot seem to recover.

The question of names is a good one. I believe that what my parents did, along with many others, is the right choice. My middle name is a Vietnamese name while my first name reflects my afamily / region. However, it is definitely one of those things I battled growing up – and to this day, really. It is a constant source of explaining. “You don’t look like a Heather”, “I always thought your name was the funniest thing” etc. get a little tiresome after a while I must admit. But then, would a Vietnamese name in a white family also have been funny? Most definitely.

So, while my middle name is Vietnamese it is also a family name, which doesn’t give me the option of a first name,  and that is a little disappointing.

In summary, I think the best thing you can do is offer your child a choice. Give them two names to represent their two cultures and that way they can choose which is most appropriate at various times in their lives without making legal changes.

As for question #2, it really is close to impossible for me to give an answer here. I think adoption is difficult no matter what the situation or geographic location. In my situation, though I don’t agree with international adoption, I am sure that staying in post war Viet Nam  wouldn’t have been a positive experience for me. I am mixed race and the country’s orphans didn’t fare well. Perhaps had I been adopted into a family there it would have been different, but children of my circumstance were called “the dust of life” and as such were no better than the filth one finds on the bottom of one’s shoe. But given different circumstances, I think it is always better to stay and be part of one’s own history and culture and language – all things that were stripped from me.

1) As far as names go, I actually think it’s better to change them. Others are free to disagree with me, but, I think keeping one’s name is sort of a false promise. It’s saying “we’re not different” when really, you are. My parents (re)named me in the same sort of name they named my biological siblings. Yes, I get weird looks when people hear my name, or if they see it on paper first they try to make it sound “Asian” (Joo leeeeee?), but I just can’t say for sure what having my other name would have meant for me. I worry that it would have only further distanced me from the rest of my family or alienated me in school (I got teased enough for my “chinky” eyes, I can’t imagine having had a name that was equally mockable). I unofficially took my birth first name as my middle name when I was seven or eight (my parents never gave me a middle name so that I could always take my birth name) and I am legally adding my birth surname as my middle name. But these were decisions I came to on my own, identifying a part of my history that I wanted to make a part of me.

I think my concern is that having an ethnic-specific name would have been too much for me as a child. I was so lost in a world of whiteness, my own confusion about who and what I was, and dealing with near constant hassling from classmates, teachers, family friends and strangers. Having to carry the burden of a Korean name, having to live up to that, honor that, just might have added more to the mix than I could bear. It’s true that many adoptees change their names later in life, but again, this is their decision on their time, so I am interested in seeing what my fellow bloggers have to say about it.

2) I think this question ties me up in existential knots. I have no idea what life would have been like had I been adopted domestically, especially given Korean laws and regulations. But, at the same time, despite all the things I might have lacked – I would not have a huge void in my life when it came to my culture. I would still be missing parts of my history, but I could at least be grounded in knowing my people. Other things, like racism, ableism, heteronormativity, etc, would have been experienced differently, filtered through a lens of cultural upbringing and a sense of the conditions for all these things in Korea.

All I can say is that it would have been different. But at the same time, this question is sort of beside the point. There are conditions, circumstances, histories and legacies that contribute to the way that transracial adoption is run, there are conditions, circumstances, histories and legacies that contribute to the way TRAs experience their adoption. This question of “better” or “worse” is what leads people to think that they are “saving” a child. That sort of attitude is never a positive contribution to one’s childhood.

Actually, two questions, coming to us from Tracey:

1.  How do you feel about adoptive parents changing your names?  Would it have been meaningful in any way to you to have kept your original names or some form of them?  Any thoughts on this subject?

2.  Do you think your adoption experience would have been any less traumatic if you had been raised in your birth country?  I realize you won´t know the answer to this 100% because you didn´t live this experience but I am still interested in your thoughts and perspectives.