Two too many Kevins

Our two Ethiopian daughters came with indeterminate birthdates. Their birth mother did not even make a guess at their ages, leaving the choice of dates and ages up to the social worker who did the initial orphanage intake interview. The girls' birthdates were chosen with some thought, and then also some randomness. Unable to ask the mother if she remembered even what season they were born in - Ethiopia's tourist slogan is "Thirteen months of sunshine," and every day does seem like the one before - the social worker presumably picked a month and day out of a hat. Amazingly, he chose a date already on my calendar as my fourth daughter's birthday for G's big day. A just missed our third daughter's birthday by two days. With 365 days to choose from, does that seem a bit odd?

The girls also came home with us saddled with strange names - not their first, given Ethiopian names, but their middle names. The adoption process in Addis Ababa dictates that all adopted children are given their father's first name as their middle name. So we have two little girls named A and G Kevin Horner-Richardson. We had never planned on changing our daughters' first names: they were chosen by their Ethiopian mother and both have beautiful meanings, but we found ourselves forced into choosing new middle names (unless we wanted them to go through life with the middle name Kevin). We did not realize at first that we had to choose their new names within 30 days of arriving home. Fortunately I finally read the fine print in our Welcome Home Instructions 26 days after we arrived back.

Feeling like we did when it was time to leave the hospital when we had not yet settled on a name, we tried our several in quick succession. We wondered if the girls had a preference - they certainly have strong opinions about most other aspects of life, we reasoned. "G," we said, "do you like Rachel or Rebekah?"

"What?" she asked, screwing up her face, twisting her neck and peering at us through the lower left corner of her eye like she sometimes does. I think she thought we were asking her about what she wanted for dinner, or which outfit she wanted to wear but she didn't recognize any of the choices.

"Names" we said brightly, wondering how to mime the concept, "Your American names." We ran through each of our own names, pouncing on the MIDDLE name each time, to try to make the point that in America we all have THREE names, but she thought we wanted to hear her Ethiopian last name, the one name we were not considering. We tried asking again what she thought of several possible names, but she just shook her head and began to look disinterested. At one point she laughed, and we wondered how we would know if a name we innocently chose might sound like something offensive in Amharic - which we never figured out.

So, we filled out the paperwork at the last minute with the names G Rachel and A Lily, followed by the ponderous Horner-Richardson. We don't know when, if ever, the girls will use those names. We wanted to give them the option of a name, should they ever want one, that does not make their softball coach ask what gender they are. (That happened this week.) They may never choose to be known by any name but the one they were christened with at the church in Woliso, Ethiopia, but this naming seems to be one more step in the adoption dance which we are clumsily trying to learn.