‘I was once another person with a different name’: Adult adoptees’ experiences of first name changes

Abstract

This article draws on findings from a study of names and adoption to discuss first name changes from the perspective of adult adoptees. We discuss how birth first names can be seen as a lost identity or ‘a life not lived’ by adoptees and how the separation between ‘birth’ and ‘adoptive’ first names can lead to confusion, with some adoptees asking, ‘Who actually am I?’ We outline how adoptees attempt to bring into their lives their birth and adopted names and identities, and explore how a lack of knowledge surrounding the origins and meanings of birth first names can lead to frustration for adult adoptees, with these names representing a missing ‘puzzle piece’ in their life stories. Our article highlights the complex variability of adult adoptees’ feelings about their names and identities and how these can change over time. Our findings suggest that current adoption practices could emphasise the importance of capturing detailed information about the origins and meanings of adoptees’ birth names more, even when these names are not retained. This could help to reduce confusion and frustration and support identity processing for adoptees in their later lives.

Plain language summary

This article extends our knowledge and understanding of first name change and adoption by exploring the experiences of adult adoptees. Our findings show the emotional impacts of first name changes for adoptees, with many viewing birth names as symbols of lost identity or a life not lived. The experience of the separation of their birth and adoptive names was confusing and led to a fragmented sense of self, often prompting the question, ‘Who am I?’ This article also explores the complex experiences of adoptees who try to integrate their birth and adoptive names to reconcile their dual identities.

Findings are drawn from a two-year study funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which employed qualitative methods including creative writing and life story interviews with adult adoptees and adoptive parents. The study showed that adoptees who retained their birth first names appreciated this continuity. In contrast, those whose names were changed often felt it was a fundamental challenge to their identity, leading to feelings of frustration and loss. For some, discovering the origins and meanings of their birth names brought joy, while for others, it led to disappointment. Overall, this article underscores the importance of names in adoptees’ identity formation and suggests that better documentation and sharing of birth name information could improve the wellbeing and self-understanding of adoptees.

This article concludes by suggesting that current adoption practices should place greater emphasis on preserving detailed information about adoptees’ birth names. This includes understanding why these names were chosen, their origins and meanings. Making this information available to adoptees from a young age could help to mitigate the confusion and frustration experienced by many adult adoptees by providing what many perceive to be missing jigsaw pieces in their life stories.

Introduction

Research on the topic of names and adoption is scarce, with only a few empirical studies worldwide that substantively address naming practices in adoption (for example, Girma, 2023; Patterson and Farr, 2017; Suter, 2012). A limited number of other empirical studies mention names and naming in passing but are primarily focused on other adoption issues (Pilcher et al., 2020). Name changes have long been a common feature in adoption (see, for example, Robertson, 2016), but we know very little about how and why names are changed, and the impact name changes have on adoptees. This article aims to extend knowledge and understanding by using new data from a qualitative study of adoption ‘name stories’ in England and Wales to focus on adult adoptees’ experiences of first name changes.

Our article begins with a consideration of existing research literature on adoption, naming and name changes, followed by an outline of our adoption name stories study. In the main part of the article, we use the name stories of adult adoptees to specifically explore their experiences of first name changes. Our findings show that those adoptees who had not experienced a first name change were greatly appreciative of this fact, while those who had had their first name changed at the time of their adoption often experienced it as a fundamental challenge to their identity. For these adoptees, birth first names were often seen as a lost identity or a ‘life not lived’ and caused feelings of confusion during different phases of their lives. We explore how, for adoptees who had experienced name changes, the unanswered questions about the origins and meanings of their birth names represented a missing puzzle piece in their life story. The discovery of answers to questions about birth names had led to joy for some adult adoptees but frustration or disappointment for others. We conclude our article by recommending that our findings about adult adoptees’ experiences of first name changes can be used to improve contemporary adoption policy and practice relating to the provision of information about adoptees’ birth names.

Adoption and first name change: Context and literature

Since the first adoption legislation in England and Wales, the Adoption of Children Act 1926, the nature of adoptions and the type of children that are adopted have changed significantly (Keating, 2009). While in the 1950s over a third of adoptions involved babies, by 1980 the figure was 24% and by 2011, babies made up just 2% of adoptions. In 2011, 62% of children who were adopted were aged one to four years old. ‘Classic adoptions’ of the 1950s were typically characterised by a childless, married couple adopting an unknown baby who had been born to an unmarried mother, but most contemporary adoptions are of children who are adopted out of local authority care (3.2% in 1952 and 77.3% of total adoptions in England and Wales in 2011–12) (Keating, 2010, 2023). These changes mean that children adopted in more recent decades likely knew part of or all of their birth-given names.

Another significant change that has occurred in England and Wales over the last four decades is the shift away from an expectation of confidentiality towards an expectation of openness in adoption practices (Jones, 2016). A more ‘open’ approach to adoption encompasses an expectation for ‘communicative openness’ (Brodzinsky, 2006) wherein adoptees are given information about their adoption and their history and origins (Jones, 2016). Unless it would be detrimental to the child’s safety, it is now widely accepted that adoptees’ birth families and life stories are central to who they are and who they will become and that maintaining some form of connection with their family of origin is beneficial (MacDonald and McSherry, 2011). In general, there is an acceptance that adoptees are not blank slates but often come with a name along with a birth culture and history (Suter, 2012). As noted by Pilcher and colleagues (2020), the change toward openness means that in more contemporary adoptions, children are more likely to know their own birth first names and often their surnames too. Information about birth family history and life stories prior to adoption are conveyed to adoptees through ‘life story books’, although the usefulness and quality of these has been questioned (for example, Harper, 1996; Livingston Smith et al., 2014; Selwyn et al., 2015; Watson et al., 2015). Research has yet to examine the role of life story books in passing on information on names to adoptees and has only mentioned names in passing (Willis and Holland, 2009).

Debates about the relevance, significance and importance of identity issues for children separated from their families of origin have gathered increasing momentum since the 1960s (Cohen and Winter, 2005; Pugh, 1999; Smith and Logan, 2004), with Grotevant (1997) arguing that identity development is a life-long process and one whose complexity increases with age. The need for open sharing of information in adoption in the context of adoptive identities is well researched (for example, Colaner and Soliz, 2017; Jordan and Dempsey, 2013; Skinner-Drawz et al., 2011), although the link between a high degree of openness and positive identity formation is not a straightforward one (Henze-Pedersen, 2019). Despite the recognised importance of information sharing and identity issues for adoptees, only a small number of studies have examined the importance of birth first names for adopted people (Pilcher et al., 2020; see also, Girma, 2023; Yngvesson and Mahoney, 2000). In this article, drawing on our qualitative study of adoption and naming, we advance knowledge and understanding by exploring experiences of first name change for the identities of adult adoptees.

Methods

Data we present and analyse in this article are drawn from a wider study of adoption and names conducted over a two-year period from September 2022. This study was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and focused on domestic non-kinship adoption in England and Wales. The qualitative project used an online creative ‘life story writing’ method and follow up one-off online one-to-one life story interviews to capture in-depth participants’ experiences of the complexities of naming, identities and family relationships in adoption. Our sample in the wider study consisted of 29 adults who were adopted as children and 22 adults who were adoptive parents. Participants were recruited through a varied strategy including via social media and multiple grassroots organisations working in adoption support, and through snowballing. In this article, our focus is on our adult adoptee participants’ experiences of first names.

Our 29 participants, who were adult adoptees, were invited to share their experiences and feelings about their names via completing a purposefully designed life-writing booklet, containing 11 different prompts or exercises to help them tell their name story. A pre-recorded online workshop was also available to support participants to creatively write in the booklets about their name and identity experiences. Participants completed their name story booklets remotely and at a time and over a time-scale that best suited them. Some chose to handwrite their name stories, others completed every section of the booklet, while others only engaged with the exercises they felt comfortable with or able to complete. A small number of participants opted not to complete the booklet at all and just to participate in an interview. Once a participant had returned their completed name story booklet, researchers used the booklet to identify areas of particular interest to focus on in the follow-up interview, which was conducted online via Microsoft Teams.

Our project aimed to examine the experiences of both young and older adult adoptees to capture how changing policies and practices in adoption may have impacted on adoptee experiences. At the time of the fieldwork for our study (2022/23), four of our 29 adult adoptee participants were aged between 18–39, and three were aged 65 years or above. The largest age group of adoptees were those between 51 and 60 years (14 out of 29 participants). One possible reason why our sample was skewed to older adult adoptees is that it may only be in mid-adulthood that adoptees feel able to begin to process and discuss their adoption experiences (Lifton, 2009). We do not have consistent data on the precise date each of our adult adoptees was adopted and/or precisely how old they were when they were adopted. However, from our participants’ responses to prompts and exercises in the creative writing booklets and/or from what they told us in their interviews, we do know that the majority of our 29 adult adoptees were adopted between 1944–2006 (only two adult adoptees were adopted post-1988) and the vast majority were adopted as babies. As such, birth names were a category of information that was not remembered independently by our participants but instead was something they learnt in later life. Our sample of adoptees included more women (20) than men (8); the gender of one participant is unknown. Most adoptees who took part in this study identified as White British (22 out of 29). Four identified as ‘Mixed or multiple ethnicity’ and a further two as ‘other ethnic group’ (the ethnicity of one participant is unknown). The reported household incomes of adoptee participants ranged from less than £15k up to £121–150k.

Our project received a favourable opinion from Nottingham Trent University’s Research Ethics Committee (Ref number: 1594818, approved 18/11/2022) and all participants gave written informed consent prior to participating. Participants in the study were invited either to use their current first name or a first name pseudonym of their own choice (albeit subject to certain conditions, e.g., that it had not already been used by another participant) or to allow the research team to choose a first name pseudonym on their behalf. Participants gave written consent for the use of their first name or first pseudonym to be used in research publications. All other names of participants, and all names of people they mentioned, were pseudonymised to reflect gender, ethnicity and age or, in some cases, were redacted altogether. Giving adoptees (who may have experienced a change of first name) the option to use their current first name was important, and many appreciated the opportunity to do so. For a more detailed exploration of pseudonym use in this research see Deakin-Smith and colleagues (2024). All other potentially identifying information in participant data was anonymised or redacted. Data from creative writing and interviews were managed using qualitative data software (NVivo) and analysed using thematic analyses (e.g., Braun and Clarke, 2006). Researchers became familiar with the data, generated initial codes, engaged in paired and team coding exercises, searched for and generated themes and used these themes and codes to analyse the data. Our thematic analysis drew on a coding frame informed by the project’s original research questions, existing research literature on names, identities and/or adoption and a close, repeated reading and analysis of participants’ responses within the name story creative writing booklets and/or interviews.

In the remainder of our article, we present and analyse creative writing and interview data to examine the experiences and felt impacts of first name changes from the perspective of our participants who were adult adoptees.

Findings

Adult adoptees’ experiences of first name changes

We asked the adoptees about the name changes they had experienced when they were adopted. Of the 29 adult adoptees, 21 had had their first name legally changed when adopted. The birth first names of two adoptees had been legally kept by their adoptive parents, but their middle name was used as a first name in everyday life. Overall, 23 out of 29 adoptees in our study were therefore called by a new first name after adoption. Only six had their birth first name​ kept and used by their adoptive parents. Our discussion, given this context of name changes and retention, focuses on four main recurrent and often interrelated themes surrounding first name changes: (1) how birth first names can be seen as a lost identity or a ‘life not lived’ for adoptees; (2) how first name changes can lead to ‘confusion of identity’ for adoptees; and, in contrast, (3) the positive reflections on those who retained their birth names. Finally (4) we explore how birth names are often seen as a missing puzzle piece in the life stories of adoptees.

A lost identity or a ‘life not lived’

A change of first name often represented a lost identity or a ‘life not lived’ for the adult adoptees included in this study. Adoptees spoke about their birth names as representing another person, who may have had different life experiences, opportunities and outcomes than they themselves had had. One adoptee, Paul Harlowe, described thinking about his birth name as a ‘sliding doors’ experience, implying that the point of name change impacted the trajectory of future events in his life, where one life had ended and another had begun. This was a sentiment shared by many of the adoptees whose birth names had been changed:

It feels like it names a possibility, a possibility of a life not lived, a path not taken. This name Kay O Brien [birth name] symbolises an unrecognised, unfulfilled potential of a life not lived. A crossroads in my journey. The ‘what ifs’. (Anne Bennett, creative writing)

The stolen names of millions of children leave a mark on my soul that you can never comprehend. All those possibilities taken and dashed in one stroke of a pen. The Who Am I? who never got a chance to be. (Bob Black, creative writing)

These experiences reflect similar findings by Yngvesson and Mahoney (2000), who reported that South Korean adult adoptees often referred to their birth names as separate identities or people who never got to grow up. One of our adoptee participants, Jackie Peaks, wrote, ‘I have always been able to wonder what Beverly’s [birth name] life would have been like, but it even now still feels confusing still that I never get that life’. When asked in her follow-up interview about this experience, Jackie said:

It’s always felt like that’s a different life that… different path that I could have led I suppose. So it was almost like… like people talk about this ghost life or whatever but it’s always felt like that to me… it definitely feels like that’s… it’s just a different, very different life, that person.

For Jackie, her birth name, Beverly, represented a life that was never lived and having two names is ‘a way of clearly identifying the two lives’ (creative writing). Similarly, when speaking about her birth name (Emma), another participant, Roz Kerr Hogan, said, ‘I have no pictures of Emma… as such, because she was never Emma when she was photographed. So it almost… there’s no ability for me to go back to that place and see her’ (interview). Most adoptees who had their first name changed spoke about their birth name as another person, separate from the person they eventually became. This distinction formed a clear break from the person they were pre-adoption to the one who was reborn/created at the point of adoption. Some adoptees used extremely emotive language to describe this shift in name. Julian Harpum called his birth name an ‘invisible name’, and Paul Harlowe stated that ‘Gary [birth name] was eradicated’ and ‘expunged from the records’ and his ‘identity erased’.

Many adoptees spoke about wondering who and what they would have become had their birth first name not undergone change:

I wonder what it would have been like to grow up being named as Kay? Would I have been different or would I be the same person? What impact has my name had on me? Who is the real me, Kay or Anne, or both, or neither? (Anne Bennett, creative writing)

Would I have been a different [person] with another name? (Clare Turner, creative writing)

For these adoptees, there was uncertainty about the impact of their name change and whether their life would have been different had their birth name been retained. For other adoptees, their birth name represented a person that would not have been affected by adoption in the way that they had been. For some, it represented a positive move away from a birth name/identity:

It feels like me but also not like me. It is a version of me that suffered extreme neglect and physical pain. It is almost easier to compartmentalise that name. She is gone and so is that stage of my life. (Louise Hall, creative writing)

For Louise, her birth name represented a person who experienced suffering and one whom she is glad to have moved away from. This reflects the findings of Ostler’s (2013) study which found that foster children can be happy to move away from a name that they associate with a difficult time in their life. In contrast, our participant, Eddie Catton, spoke in his interview about his birth name/identity as a person who would have been undamaged by the trauma his adoption caused:

I would love to meet Thomas Roberts [birth name]. I’d love to know what he would have been like if he’d got past [the first few] months. Erm… you know, the… the undamaged me. It would have been nice to meet him. I think I know what he would be like.

When asked what he thought Thomas would be like, Eddie replied: ‘I think he’d be super, super gentle… and… caring and very relaxed. All those things that I’m not really (laughs)… And you know, it would have been nice to have spent my whole life not feeling anxious.’

Similarly, other adoptees spoke of their birth names as being a person less ‘damaged’ by their adoption:

I do wonder if life would have been different… Maybe, if I’d stayed as Matthew I wouldn’t have been so unsettled emotionally and found it so hard to feel truly safe all these years. (Andrew Campbell, creative writing)

I feel if my birth name had still been my name I would have been the person I should have been. (Bob Black, creative writing)

For Andrew, Bob and Eddie, their birth first names represented an ‘other life’ – one in which they may have avoided the negative impacts of their adoptions.

‘Confusion of identity’

For adoptees who see their birth name as another person or ‘life not lived', this could lead to what Bob Black described as a ‘confusion of identity’, with questions arising over which one of the two people they are. For many, the discovery of their birth name was shocking, prompting a questioning of their identity. As Eddie describes it, this is an experience unique to adoptees:

Name isn’t identity, but it’s very close to it. Identity is strange – if you’ve always had it, or if you’ve never had it, you have no idea what it feels like. If you didn’t have it, and then you discover it, you get a better idea of how it feels. (Eddie Catton, creative writing)

Discovery of an alternative birth name was often a shock which caused disruption in adoptees’ lives. This was also often a point of identity negotiation, prompting an attempt to find out which version of themselves they were or wanted to be:

When I found out my original name, Marjorie James, I had a kind of breakdown. Suddenly, Nicola Green was not there. I still can’t make head or tail of my identity… Sometimes I don’t know who I am. (Nicola Sands, creative writing)

At around ten years of age, I was told by my adoptive mother that [my name] wasn’t the name I had been first given… That was quite a shock, it confused and hurt me as it contributed to a challenge to what I then perceived as my identity. (Andrew Campbell, creative writing)

It was just like a landslide because Margaret Alice, or Alice was the name that I’d been known by for [many] years. I did know when I was [early teens] that my name had been changed but obviously I had no clue what it was, erm so it was just as if my whole identity had been swept away erm within a split second… it didn’t sort of fit me, this new name, but my old name didn’t fit me either. (Margaret Barber, creative writing)

For Nicola, Andrew and Margaret, discovery of a past name challenged what they thought was their identity. This discovery, and trying to reestablish their identity in light of it, was an ongoing process for adoptees. For Eleanor, the use of her birth name in communications with her birth mother had caused confusion from a young age:

I found this really difficult at times, as when reading the letters I could never relate it to myself. It always sounded like they were talking about a stranger. I have kept all the letters, and when reading them back all these years later, I can now see why I had issues with my identity and struggled to understand who I was in the world, because it was like having two different identities. (Eleanor Brown, creative writing)

Two of our adoptees had subsequently attempted to overcome confusion surrounding their identity by using or combining both their birth name and adoptive names. Courtney-Grace Short retained her first name legally when adopted, but her adoptive parents had added the middle name, Grace, and used this as a first name in everyday life. Despite her first name being legally retained, she describes how this change had deeply impacted her sense of identity culminating in her reverting back to using her birth first name and becoming known as Courtney-Grace in her teenage years. Courtney-Grace spoke in her interview about Courtney and Grace as two separate people who she embodied at different times in her life and depending on who she was with. ‘Courtney’ and ‘Grace’ behave in different ways, wear different clothes and speak with a different accent and pitch:

I think Grace is the front but Courtney is definitely… feels a lot more like I’m in my own skin. I always joke with my [friend] that Grace is kind of like my dead name. And I suppose it is, like even the whole act of getting ready for Grace, like I’m not trans, so I wouldn’t pretend to understand what that’s like but it does kind of feel like I’m putting on like a drag outfit or something like that. It’s just this whole façade and act.

Courtney-Grace’s experience of first name change shows how informally changing an adopted child’s first name can have the same impact as a legal change. Courtney-Grace described her struggles with bringing together the two identities of Courtney and Grace and ultimately using her own agency to decide for herself which version of herself she wanted to be.

Evelyn Harrison had her legal first name changed when she was adopted and found out her birth name as a young teenager. Evelyn told a friend her birth name, who then decided to call her by that name, Stephanie. After leaving school, Evelyn would say ‘I’m Evelyn, some people call me Stephanie’ when meeting new people, which led to more and more people calling her Stephanie. Evelyn said the use of her birth name ‘grew quite organically’ which initially brought Evelyn great joy: ‘I mean I loved it, it gave me a really lovely feeling when she said that to me, like joyful feeling, really sweet feeling. Erm I was delighted (laughs).’ Unfortunately, this initial joy was overshadowed because the simultaneous use of Evelyn and Stephanie had also created problems for Evelyn. In her interview, she told us:

… because I had the pleasure, the lovely pleased feeling of… of when I was called Stephanie and sort of a different feeling about Evelyn, I felt I could probably alleviate some of the embarrassment about being Evelyn, that there was around it, about having been this adopted… And then erm [coughs] Stephanie had initially felt like a validation and a… and erm a… erm a delight, a delightful thing, as if I … as you know, escaping from those awkward feelings. But eventually they became to represent those awkward feelings because those two names won’t go into one.

Evelyn described how the two names represented her overall struggles with her identity as an adoptee: ‘I had a kind of mini panic attack thinking about my names. So obviously the real crisis I suppose was just the whole adoptee situation… all those things that were represented I suppose by… by those names.’ Evelyn eventually decided to go by the name Evelyn, but this was not a simple solution and created additional struggles where Evelyn felt she had ‘lost’ the side of her represented by the name Stephanie:

But the thing was, once I said I’m Evelyn, everyone started using it and didn’t seem to be able to tap-in or nobody seemed to tap into that feeling erm, it felt like a little icon on the screen and you’d click on it and it enlarges. There was this Stephanie side that would bring that side of my personality but needed to be called out. And no-one was calling that out. And eventually I just became… I was losing the will to live, that side was so important and I didn’t know what to do.

We have examined Courtney-Grace and Evelyn’s name stories in detail because they usefully highlight how having two names, representing two versions of themselves, can create identity struggles for adult adoptees. In addition to the stories of Courtney-Grace and of Evelyn/Stephanie, several other adoptees in our study had either reverted to their birth first name either legally or informally, others used their birth first name in certain contexts and two had changed to an entirely new name to move away from their birth and adoptive first names.

It is important to note that not all adoptees who had their first name changed said they had experienced a confusion about their identity. Indeed, some adoptees said they were glad to have had their first name changed. For example, Dermot Fuller spoke very positively about his first name change and described how his adoptive first name ‘connects me with the [Irish] heritage and identity of my [adoptive] parents in a way that an English name would not have’. Dermot went on to say, ‘I love my mum and dad deeply and I can’t help but feel their giving me a name has helped with that’. Dermot therefore felt the names chosen by his adoptive family had helped him bond with them:

I don’t know Scott [birth first name], and I guess no one ever will… Maybe like Dermot, maybe very different – it matters not now. I’m happy being Dermot and everything I have experienced. Which is not to say Scott wouldn’t have had a good life, I’ve never doubted that [he would have been loved]. But that is another life in another version of this universe. (Dermot Fuller, creative writing)

Dermot does acknowledge that ‘Scott’ may have had a different life to his but does not reflect on this as an unresolved question or a conflict of identity. This reflects the finding of other studies (e.g., Girma, 2023) who found that in some cases adoptees are glad to have moved away from their birth first names.

Another of our participants also talked about being glad her name had been changed when she was adopted:

The name I was originally given is not a horrible name, but I can’t imagine being called that name now… I think maybe my original name fits the area that I’m from, it is quite common sounding and the people I went to school with who had that name tended to be people that matched the description of the types of people I imagine living in the area. (Eva Londesborough, creative writing)

Eva was glad to move away from her birth first name due to negative associations with the place where she was born. However, she was not entirely happy with the name chosen by her adoptive parents either:

I like the name I have now, but if I could of chosen my name I don’t feel like it is what I would have picked. I am used to my current name, however I don’t feel particularly attached to it, I don’t feel any name that I had or now have really represents who I am. (Eva Londesborough, creative writing)

Eva’s reflections show how for adoptees, it is not as simple as being happy or unhappy with a name change as emotions can be far more complex, with some not feeling connected to either their birth or adoptive name. The name stories of adoptees have revealed how first name changes can lead to confusion surrounding identity, which had a profound impact on the lives of some adoptees.

Retention of first names

Six adoptees in this study did not have their first name changed when adopted. All six reflected on this positively, with several stating that this helped them to retain a connection with their birth family history and so contributed to a sense of a coherent identity:

As someone that kept all but one of my birth names, everything has it on which is amazing and makes me happy. (Tiegan Corbyn Watson, creative writing)

My name means something to me as my first and middle name were given and chosen for me by my birth mother, therefore my names are original, real, part of my mother and I, and was not adulterated by the adoption procedures of the time or from my adoptive parents. At least I had some originality which has given me a feeling of ‘realness’, to an extent, as adoption is so ‘unreal’. (Carol Withers, creative writing)

I am very attached to my name as for a long time it was the only connection I had to my birth mother. (Phillippa Bacca, creative writing)

Adoptees who did not have their name changed commented on the potential impacts a name change might have had. Isaac Erhlich wrote: ‘my parents obviously considered whether or not to change my name, and made minimal changes – perhaps trying to minimise the impact on me at that age through a complex enough process.’ Tiegan Corbyn Watson similarly acknowledged in her creative writing that a name change could have impacted her identity:

… its provided a consistency and reduced the change when I was adopted… It would be weird to have different names then my birth name think it would make me feel like two people or [like] I had lived two different lives which I already get as an adoptee when [I] reflect on my different families and the connections we have.

Tiegan and Isaac were grateful their names were not changed, and they felt it had enabled them to avoid additional disruption to their identities due to their adopted status. Other adoptees also commented that their birth families had appreciated the fact their names had not been changed by their adopters and, in some cases, this had helped reestablish relationships: ‘It means… a lot to my birth mother when she realized my adoptive parents had kept the name she gave me’ (Gemma Munson, creative writing).

Tiegan similarly spoke about her birth family’s joy upon discovering, not only that her name had been retained, but that the nickname they used for her when she was young would still be relevant and had not been used by her adoptive parents: ‘I think they almost took it as a sign of you know, that keeping that … you know, the universe almost wanted to keep that connection between us you know’ (Tiegan Watson, creative writing).

For adoptees in our study, retention of birth first names was positive for both their identity and for relationships with birth family members upon reunion.

Birth names as a missing ‘puzzle piece’

I suppose if I’m a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, that was… that [birth name] was one of the pieces, quite a big piece. (Lisa Gaskell, interview)

Grotevant (1997: 12) argues that ‘in coming to terms with themselves as adults, individuals need to know who they are as adopted persons’. Here, we argue that to do this, adoptees also need to understand who they were prior to their adoption, and names have an important role in this process. One common finding in research on the sharing of information in adoption is that blocked information is experienced as a missing ‘puzzle piece’ (Colaner and Soliz, 2017; Jordan and Dempsey, 2013; Skinner-Drawz et al., 2011). As we show next, our data build on this insight by showing that, without knowledge about their names, adoptees often struggled to piece together and fully understand their adoption story and the jigsaw puzzle of their adoptive identity.

Although all the adoptees who participated in this study knew what their birth names had been and whether a change had been made, the level of detail they had about these names varied. The point of discovering a name change had often raised questions for adoptees surrounding the origins and meanings behind their names. Some adoptees had subsequently been given the opportunity to find out this information, either from their adoptive parents or if reunited with their birth parents. But for other adoptees, questions remained, causing confusion and frustration because they saw this information as a missing ‘jigsaw piece’ in their life story:

I wonder why she [birth mother] chose that name and how much thought went into it, whether it was a name she loved or whether it was something that was a tick box, something she was made to do and Gemma was the first name she thought of. (Gemma Munson, creative writing)

I wonder if it had some importance – if she did [birth mother] give me the name. I deserve to know; it might help me feel more real. (Jackie Peaks, creative writing)

Adoptees whose names had been retained also longed for information relating to their names. One adoptee, who did not have her first name changed when adopted, said her name means ‘nothing, and everything. It is who I am but I don’t know why’ (Louise Hall, creative writing). When asked further about this at interview, Louise said: ‘I just don’t know why I’m called what I’m called. So it’s like is it a relative, is it you know, someone they liked, is it a friend? Why did they choose it? Like there’s no answers to it.’

The adoptees in our study reflected Cohen and Winter’s (2005) suggestion that adoptees are left with questions surrounding ‘Who am I?’ Many adoptees used the creative writing exercises to express remaining questions surrounding the meaning of their names:

I’d like to know why [I was] called Kay? [I] wonder if there is any story behind this? I feel like not knowing why [the name was chosen], leaves a piece of the jigsaw missing from the Story of Me, which I would like to fill. I also wonder if I will be disappointed if there is no story? (Anne Bennett)

I am now wondering what the significance of naming me Matthew was and whether [my birth mother used my name] when we parted for the very last time. What did [she] say to me? (Andrew Campbell)

Grotevant (1997) argues that the unique identity challenges facing adopted persons are about ‘givens’ in their lives rather than about choices they are to make. For adoptees, therefore, identity development ‘involves constructing a narrative that somehow includes, explains, accounts for, or justifies their adoptive status’ (Grotevant, 1997: 10). Birth names are a ‘given’ for adoptees and one which they cannot ‘change’ (even if their adoptive parents had done so). It was important to adoptees in this study to know their birth names and their origins/meanings to face their identity as an adoptee. Where information was not available surrounding the meanings of birth names, some adoptees developed their own ideas/fantasies about their names:

I did wonder whether there was a message in my name from my birth mother. Kimberley, one who is [special]. (Stephanie Streets, creative writing)

My [half birth sibling] that I found on the birth mother’s side did say that she had a doll that she used to call Polly [birth name]… And she wondered if that had something to do with it. (Clare Turner, interview)

The only thing I could think of was, she’d been a churchgoer… And of course James was originally a saint’s name. So I don’t, I don’t know, I mean it’s a bit of an assumption. (Peter Romano, interview)

These examples show how adoptees attempt to fill the gaps in their name stories by finding meanings about why their birth names were chosen by their birth parents. Treacher and Katz (2001: 20) argue that many ‘narratives and fantasies function to pass over problematic feelings and fantasies relating to adoption’. Similarly, our study has found that adoptees developed fantasies to help deal with the problematic feelings surrounding the unknown meanings of their birth names and to their adoption history more generally.

Several adoptees had the opportunity to discover the meaning or origins of their birth names which had brought comfort, answers and, in some cases, joy. Gaynor Bannister had reunited with her birth parents and discovered her birth name was linked to their favourite song:

[They gave] me a special birth name that meant something to [them]. I felt like [they] were sending me out into the unknown with a little piece of [them] kept in my heart… The song is now one of my favourites. [My birth parents] changed the spelling to [an alternative] way because it meant [loved] – which means [they] looked it up and took time to discuss and come to that decision. (Interview)

For Gaynor, learning the meaning of her birth name had helped her to reflect positively on her birth parents and the period of her life before her adoption. The song she was named after had become a very important part of her identity and her relationship with her birth family.

Discovering the meaning of a birth name did not always end positively for adoptees. In her booklet, Sally Taylor told us: ‘I recently asked my birth mother about the name she gave me, it was disappointing to find out there was no story – she just liked it!’ During Sally’s interview, she went on to talk about her disappointment:

You live for a long time in erm, in an ‘I wonder’, not a fantasy world but you know, in a kind of oh well I wonder if this and I wonder if that… But erm I think because you’re always you know, looking for extension, you’re looking for connection and obviously if there isn’t connection through your name, then erm obviously you, you know you have to find it elsewhere. Erm and I think that’s probably the most obvious one that people you know, people talk about well I was named after this or I was named because of that. Erm so yeah, yeah it’s possibly where the slight disappointment lies.

Similar to Henze-Pedersen (2019), we found that adoptees had complex feelings relating to their identity, and in this case first names, irrespective of the openness and level of information made available to them. However, adoptees in this study did appreciate openness in terms of names information. Despite some experiencing disappointment surrounding the meaning of their birth names, adoptees expressed a longing for detailed information about them and often cherished this information once accessed. Similarly, Willis and Holland (2009) conducted life story work with young people and found that participants explained ‘in detail’ about why they were given their birth names and the meanings behind them (2009: 49), again showing the importance of this information to adoptees. Unfortunately, this information was often difficult for adoptees to access, particularly when they had not reunited with their birth family and/or their adoptive parents did not know the meanings behind their names. These adoptees are left to ‘fill in the gaps’ or find the missing ‘jigsaw pieces’ of their name stories.

Discussion

Current policy and practices in England and Wales on adoption and naming emphasise that adoptees’ birth first names should not be changed at the point of adoption, unless required for safeguarding purposes. It might be argued, therefore, that the stories told by our adoptees about name changes are not relevant to contemporary adoptions. We argue that this is not the case. Findings from our study suggested that first name changes are still commonplace, at least among participants in our wider study who were adoptive parents. Collectively, the 22 adopters who participated in our research had adopted 29 children. All but one of these adoptions had taken place between 2010–2023, with half in or after 2019. Of these 29 children, 14 had their birth first name changed and a further two legally retained their birth first name but their new middle name was used in everyday life. Our findings suggest that first name changes may remain a prominent feature in experiences of contemporary cohorts of adopted children.

Our analysis of name stories told by adult adoptees highlights the complex responses and impacts of first name changes. For many adoptees, their birth name represented ‘another life’ or a person who never got to grow up. This, for some, led to confusion of identity with adoptees having to negotiate and figure out ‘Who am I?’ It is important to note that not all adult adoptees claim to have struggled with their name change, with some telling us they were grateful for this change and found it to be a positive part of their adoption. However, all the adult adoptees in our study had at some point questioned what their life would have been like had they kept their birth name and had some level of question marks surrounding their ‘other life’. The reflections of many of the adoptee participants in this study about their names are in keeping with the ideas offered by the theory of adult adoptee consciousness, which discusses the circumstances in which adoption is sometimes understood and internalised by adult adoptees as an emotionally destabilising experience (see Branco et al., 2024).

Our study of experiences of names in adoption was a qualitative, exploratory study of an under-researched topic. Due to the relatively small scale of the study, comparisons between adult adoptees by age group, ethnicity or experiences of openness of adoptions was not appropriate. The findings reported in this article are also limited by the characteristics of our sample of adult adoptees. Adoptee participants aged 50 plus are overrepresented and adoptees aged 18–40 are underrepresented in our sample. Given the changed practices and cultures of adoption in England and Wales before and since the 1970s, and the longer lives in which older adoptees have had time to reach an understanding of their adoptive identities, this unevenness in age profile likely impacted our findings about experiences of first names among adult adoptees. Future research might explore how younger adult adoptees experience their first names and name changes, including the role they themselves had in adoption-related first name decisions. Future research may also compare the experience of adoptees who learn of their name change early in life versus those who discover it later.

Prior to our study, little was known about experiences of name change among adult adoptees in England and Wales. This article not only enhances understandings of the experiences of adult adoptees, but our findings can also be applied to current practices with a view to improving the experiences of those adoptees who have been more recently adopted. Girma (2023: 206) has argued that names are a ‘concrete and symbolically significant piece of the identity puzzle for transnational adoptees’. Our study has shown that this is also the case for many domestic adoptees in England and Wales, with missing names information leaving adult adoptees frustrated by unanswered questions. Irrespective of whether first names are retained or changed, details about birth names were important to adoptees. Our argument in this article is that it is not enough simply to have the basic information provided by a birth certificate as more context is needed, including why names were chosen, name origins and the meaning/stories behind names. This supports the suggestion made by Baden (2016) that ‘microfictions’ (a type of microaggression) in the form of shared and hidden narratives can contribute to and define secrecy in adoption. We argue that where birth first names are changed, an open dialogue providing adoptees with a full and detailed narrative, at an age-appropriate point, is important to cushion the ‘sliding doors’ or ‘landslide’ moments experienced by so many of our adult adoptees upon discovering their birth names. We therefore recommend that information surrounding birth names and the changes that occurred should be as freely available as possible to adoptees from a young age.

We suggest that this information could be incorporated into life story work which is now commonplace in adoptions within England and Wales. Statutory adoption guidance states that ‘all children with a plan for adoption must have a life story book’ (Department for Education [DfE], 2014: para. 3.10) and that it should represent ‘a realistic and honest account of the circumstances surrounding the child’s adoption’ (DfE, 2011: para. 2.5). Life story books should therefore be regarded as a right in respect of the child’s access to information on their early history and background prior to adoption (Feast, 2010). Despite this, the quality, consistency and impacts of life story books has been found to be variable (Livingston Smith et al., 2014; Selwyn et al., 2015; Watson et al., 2015). We suggest that life story books should be expanded to include details relating to birth names and the circumstances surrounding name changes. Making this information freely available to adoptees, from a young age, could help to mitigate the impacts of discovering a birth name in later life and avoid the frustration and confusion experienced by our sample of adult adoptees who were looking to fill the gaps in their adoption stories.

As highlighted by Aldgate and Simmonds (1988: 11), the production of life story books is based on social work assertions that ‘knowing the facts of one’s past is a necessary part of the development of a sense of personal history, identity and culture’. Our research has found that information surrounding birth names is a necessary part of this process and can be essential in allowing adoptees to navigate their identity and to understand their history throughout their lives. As well as the implications our study has for contemporary adoption practices, our findings also have policy and practice implications for post-adoption services and clinical work with adoptees, including during adulthood. For example, the adoption name stories of our sample of adult adoptees suggest that clinicians could benefit from guidance on how best to help their adult adopted clients to navigate the complexities of dealing with the ways names and name changes impact upon their identities.

Our article highlights that first names are important to adult adoptees and can play a significant role in coming to terms with their identity and understanding their past. Names have previously been overlooked in terms of their importance in the stories of adult adoptees. However, we have shown they can be an essential jigsaw piece enabling adoptees to more fully answer the question of, ‘Who am I?’