“What’s in a Name?” – For the Girls

Susan Reardon

Adoptive Parent Mentor & Coach

We were fully prepared to incorporate whatever names our children’s birth parents chose, but they did not have anything picked out and left the decision to us.

Alexandra was a name we both like and we were still undecided on a middle name. It was tie between Jennifer (a cousin I had tragically and suddenly lost only three months prior) and Grace (after my grandmother). We eventually decided on Grace and called our Family Advocate to tell her. She also asked if we would be willing to add an additional name should the birth parents choose one and she used “Jennifer” as an example. Not knowing the other name we were considering, we immediately got the chills that out of all the names she could have used, she chose Jennifer as an example. Knowing my cousin and how much she loved to be the center of attention, we took that as a message from her. And our daughter was immediately renamed Alexandra Jennifer-Grace

We had a name chosen for our third child, Caden for a boy and Kayden for a girl. I had always liked the name Elizabeth so she was supposed to be named Kayden Elizabeth. But after the honor of being witness to her birth and everything her birth mother went through to bring her into the world, no other name would do. She was most certainly Kayden Melissa.

Michele Fried, BS

CEO and Founder

My husband and I have never taken naming our children lightly. In fact sometimes I think we spent too many excruciating hours that we found ourselves on more than one occasion with babe in arms and no name! I am happy to say after all these years, we genuinely love our children’s names and as far as I can tell, they do too. In our earlier parenting years, we strived to be unique but not too different, yet some of their names later peaked as some of the more popular names. Jordan for example not only became a popular boy’s name but a girl’s name too. Susanna Miriam (is a combination of both birth family and adoptive family names) and Alyssa was named by her birth parents. Our last four children, Eden (I fell in love with it, even though I found it in the “boy section” of a baby name book … I should say we loved more than one name, so Eden Ariella Sarah she became!). Next was Elisheva, a name given to her by her birth parents. Her nickname is “Sheva” which is the Hebrew word for “Seven” as she coincidentally became our seventh child! Zenobia (because we met someone years earlier with that name and filed it away as “maybe one day!”).

Though some of our children never could find a toothbrush or keychain with their name on it, they seemed to enjoy the story of how their name came to be. They seem proud to introduce their name (and nicknames) to others and have taken on a personality to match their special names!