u/NapalmGirlTonight

Hey! I’m hoping to go to the Cleveland show, and I figured I would stay in town an extra couple days just because it’s gonna take me seven hours to drive there so why not. I’m bringing my two cats with me. Not to the show obviously. Although they do look cute in their little Viagra Boys t-shirts ha ha ! Anyhow, anyone able to share recommendations of fave record stores and vintage concert shirt stores and outsider art places? Or any fellow middle aged punk cat moms want to grab dinner somewhere yummy before the show? Maybe Thai?

Hi, all. I’m a baby scoop adoptee who’s about to embark on changing her legal name.

My heritage is 88% Europe & 12% Africa. I was medically experimented on at birth, in hospital for 6 weeks, in foster care for 6 weeks, and then I ended up in a very abusive and neglectful adoptive household.

I’ve recently started telling people that I’m a foster child not an adoptee because the world at large simply doesn’t understand how being adopted isn’t a constant never-ending hallmark moment orgasm.

So anyhow I am about to legally change my name. First name and last name both. For my new first name, I’m simply using a fun nickname that came about organically.

It actually started when a guy friend got my name confused with my cat’s name because I used my cat’s name is part of my email address.

Anyhow, it’s been a good nickname for me. A lot of people say I look more like my nickname than my adoptive first name.

I definitely FEEL more like my nickname than my adoptive first name!

For my new last name, I am 99% sure I’m going to use my bio mom’s last name. Because it’s short and easy to spell, and it’s a group of people that I am genetically linked to and look like. (Even if I’ve never actually met any of them.)

I’m currently in very low contact with my bio mom because she’s very high drama and in denial about how bad my situation was with my adoptive family.

I’ll probably resume contact with her once I get a little more stable. We have not met. We were just penpals. She lives far away.

She comes from money and she definitely gave off a vibe of wondering if I was making contact with her to pressure her for some cash assistance. Like inviting me to visit her in Florida, and offering me her guest cottage, but saying she couldn’t afford to help with my greyhound bus ticket because she’s “too poor.”

She’s not a bad person. But it’s kind of like dealing with a hysterical teenager all the freaking time, and I don’t like being gaslit.

My bio dad is not interested in any contact at all and the only slivers of info I have about him are from my random matches on 23 And Me who are his nieces and nephews. Initially was not at all interested in having his surname as part of my new name.

But again, I have always been super interested in knowing more about where I come from originally.

Who is my tribe.

And also, his surname is short, VERY common, simple to spell, & it sounds good next to my bio mom‘s surname. It’s perfect.

I’m not 100% sure that I want his name in there. But if I think about it from a tribe perspective then, hey, why not? I would love to go to the places that my people came from and get into interesting conversations with people about how much I do or don’t look like different surnames from that region. Maybe even meet a few very distant cousins, ha ha! And those conversations won’t strike up as easily if I’m not using my biological surnames.

I’m thinking of keeping my adoptive first name in the mix just because that’s the name that 90% of the world knows me as- all my school acquaintances and basically anyone before five years ago.

As far as the last name goes, it’s from an ethnic heritage that I am not connected to emotionally and don’t look like physically. It’s long and very difficult to spell and has created years worth of problems just for that reason alone – I exist as multiple different versions of myself with every doctor I’ve ever been to, for example.

My 19 y o daughter (who doesn’t have any love-hate relationship with this name) recently decided to legally change to only her dad’s surname and that’s now in the works.

So my question is, is there any reason at all that I should consider keeping my adoptive surname in my new legal name??

Before I might have kept it in there so that my daughter and I would share that link. But that reason is gone now.

Is there any other reason that I am blindly missing here?

A few people had suggested that I just create an entirely new last name. Just find one I like, an author or artist or someone I admire. Or just make one up that has some kind of special meaning to me.

I did try all of those different methods, but nothing really spoke to me.

I guess because I’m so tired of not looking or feeling like my last name that I’m just ready for there to be an actual cellular DNA connection to my freaking surname already!

I don’t want anything artificial. And I also worry that anything I copy or invent I might get tired of down the road…

Do you have any surname options I haven’t thought of yet?

Has anyone been through this and either regretted a certain kind of choice, or feel very relieved that they made a certain other kind of choice??

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!