Are You My Name?

By Ruby Barnett The first time I saw my birth certificate, I was fourteen. It was a rainy February afternoon in North London, and I was rifling through Dad’s drawer of important documents while he and Mum were out. The certificate was folded into three, in the hanging file marked R. I opened it carefully, noting the County seal. I’d only previously known the name of the town where I was born. A familiar feeling stirred inside me – a combination of warmth and wonder, exile and belonging. I didn’t know yet where or to whom I belonged, but figured I would soon. Maybe I’d even find out right now, from this document.

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I tried to control my eyes, letting myself initially look only at things I thought I was allowed to know, like birth date and name. My cheeks smarted from disobedience. I shouldn’t have been in their room, let alone looking in that drawer. I let my eyes move over to the section where the entries for father and mother were. There were the names of my parents, the ones I had lived with since I was a baby, the ones who were currently out of the house for a couple of hours. I knew that I was adopted. This document made it look like I wasn’t. 

This official-looking piece of paper read like a legal record of my adoptive mother giving birth to me. That couldn’t be true. She wasn’t there, she didn’t even know of my existence on the date of my birth. I doubt she ever set foot in that hospital. I felt like I was walking into a trap. Had they put this here as a cover? Could it be a lie that I was adopted? I wouldn’t be able to ask anything about it, since I wasn’t meant to be here. Served me right, for doing what I shouldn’t. 

On a subsequent stealth visit to that drawer, I noticed a small stamp in the bottom left corner of the document, which read “Amended On,” followed by a typed date eighteen months after my birthdate. I guessed that must have been after the adoption was finalized. The name on my amended birth certificate is Ruthanna Louise.  

The name ‘Ruthanna’ usually requires some explanation—is that two words or one? I got used to saying “Ruth and Anna—all in one word—no hyphen.” “Indecisive parents,” I would add at the end, with a flash of a dazzling smile. A technique to lighten, cushion the space, to lift the questioner out of any discomfort they may have felt by not immediately getting it right. 

However dazzling and cushioned, the moments would still be awkward. A break in the flow of communication. The unexpected complexity of my answer often ruined the flow of previously interesting and easy conversation. 

My parents’ story of the name is different. The narrative they told my brother and me about our adoptions included a thread of “how much they wanted a baby girl to make their family complete.” When they finally “found” me, they had a few possible names: Vivian, Judith, Louise, Anna, and Ruth. The last was a strong choice, attached to the bible story of Ruth and the theme of “my people are your people.” For my eighteenth birthday, Mum gave me a gilded Book of Ruth, overcome with emotion as she did so. I must have remained un-named for some time after being placed with them, because their story is that when they told some friends the names that they were considering for me, they ended the utterance with “… Ruth, Anna, or Louise”. As they said it out loud, they stopped and said “Oh! Doesn’t that sound good” and there was my name - Ruthanna Louise. 

They told us we were adopted when we were very small. I’m sure I first overheard them telling my older brother the story before I was old enough to understand. I feel like I’ve always known. The story they told was designed for very small children, something along the lines of “Mummy and Daddy very much wanted to have children, but weren’t able to have their own, so they went to adopt a baby who didn’t have anyone to look after them.”  

I always waited for the part about me:  

“...Then we decided we really wanted a baby girl to make our family complete. We went back to see if we could, and there you were. And we knew straight away that you were the one, so we took you home”. 

Me? The right one? I was the right one? How did you know? 
Was it from how I looked? What did I look like? 
How could you be so sure? 
(Are you still so sure?) 
Where did you go to find us? 
Where was I? What was I doing? 
How old was I? 
What was my name? 

No direct answers were ever offered. Mum always gave the same response. “You’ve seen the photo. With all of us. You are sitting on Daddy’s lap. That was very soon after bringing you home. I stuck that bow on your head with sticky tape. I couldn’t get it to stay in on its own.”  

I did know the photo. It was black and white, the four of us sitting down. My brother on Mum’s lap, me on Dad’s. My brother wore a bow tie, he didn’t have much hair, a cheeky grin on his face. I was in a white dress with a bow in the middle of it as well as the one on my head. A small baby, though old enough to hold my own head, to sit up alone. I was not smiling; I looked somber. It seemed like a scene with cutouts for heads, into which the four of us had imposed ourselves, the perfect nuclear family. 

So I knew that they had named me. And in that photo, I’d guess I was about seven months old. I wondered what my name had been before. Mum’s answer was that I had been referred to as Baby Girl. She said that not much information was shared voluntarily in those days, and she had not asked for anything more. She didn’t want to know, she just wanted to get on with being my mum and loving me. She said that they were told that they just had to “love us enough” and then we would be like any other normal family. 

I knew they didn’t want to talk much about the details. My brother didn’t want to either. When they told the story, he would listen quietly and change the subject immediately. I couldn’t curb my curiosity. I asked periodically, carefully, never pushing too hard. I’d learned quickly the violent price of not behaving as was expected and I used up any free passes that might be on offer simply by being me—too clumsy, too many questions, uncontrollable hair. I couldn’t afford to deliberately push on something that was clearly so touchy. 

I grew more frustrated by the continued need to explain my name, envious of the Janes, Justines, and Suzannes. My favorite names had just one syllable. I imagined how easy it would be to make friends with a name like that. I wondered if my birth name had been one syllable. Something easy, catchy, open, friendly. How different my life would be if I could introduce myself so simply. Maybe I would find out one day, and even use my birth name when I was older. 

In my early 30s, a search angel helped me to find out my birthname, Vanessa Michelle. It didn’t resonate at all. Not anywhere—not in my mind nor in my body. 

Nothing. No recognition. No feelings. 

No familiarity. No home. No grounding. 

No belonging. 

Typed flat words. 

More numbness. 

I found my birth mother a few years after finding out my birth name. In our first conversation, a three hour telephone call, she told me that she hadn’t wanted to call me Vanessa. Her mother had apparently forced it upon us both.  

Really? So there IS another name! What is the name that she had wanted? This is going to be it. This will be the name that resonates. A brief moment of excitement for me. A reignition of expectant anticipation. And it will be something I love, that she and I both like. It’s going to be an example of how we are the same, we’ll have shared tastes. 

“I wanted to call you Grace,” she said. 

I burst out laughing in spite of my disappointment. Without being unnecessarily self-deprecating, I am one of the least graceful people on the planet. It most definitely is not the name for me. 

About ten years later, I was on the boat from LA to Catalina Island with my partner at the time, her father and my daughter. We were chatting with a young couple and reached that point in the conversation where they introduced themselves and asked our names. When I answered, “Ruthanna,” one of them looked back at me and said, “Rubella?”. 

I cackled and said, “Yes, that’s right. My parents named me after the German measles. And I go by Ruby for short!” My own words surprised me. Oh! I love that name. Ruby. My maternal (adoptive) grandmother was called Ruby Olive. She hated her first name and used only her middle name, which had always amused me since I thought they were so similar. Grandma Olive died when I was 21, and although her passing was a release from the prison of Alzheimer’s, I had found myself sobbing uncontrollably for days. Grieving the lost opportunities of a woman with a strong character, born in a generation in which she had such limited options. Now I was tickled by the idea that I had finally fallen upon a name that could liberate me from the one I hated, and that I could take her name forward in my life of expanding freedoms. 

I was also amused by the connection to “Rubella.” Before my teens, I had been introduced to punk by my older brother, and I loved the strength and power in the angry music, especially with female vocalists. My favorite band for many years was Rubella Ballet. On the many occasions when my plans to go out would be thwarted by my parents’ strict rules, I would stomp upstairs to my bedroom and blast Rubella Ballet’s “Emotional Blackmail” as loudly as I could from my tape player, screaming along with it. I felt smug that my parents probably missed the pointed attack on them from the lyrics. And I liked that my initials matched those of the band.  

I tried on the name Ruby. Many people who already knew me took to it with easy relish. More significantly, I had my first experience of easeful introductions. The reaction was everything I had ever wanted. “Oh, what a beautiful name! It really suits you.” And then back to the conversation we were previously having, the flow not interrupted, nor ruined, but enhanced with the shared intimacy of knowing each other’s names. 

It's stuck with me since then. Many people I love have only ever known me as Ruby. 

Others use both, some still only use Ruthanna. I don’t think I mind. I often use my initials - RB. I wonder if I will ever feel wholly at home in a name. Would I even recognize such a feeling if I had it? There is something so primal about naming. Such a deep connection to identity, belonging. That’s likely the reason that adoptive parents like to re-name the children they adopt. Yet that adds to the separation, the non-attachment that we adoptees experience. 


I can’t help but contrast the care given to rescued animals compared to us human adoptees. The ASPCA advises shelter staff and potential pet adopters to “keep in mind that if an animal comes in who already knows his name, it’s better to retain it since he’s used to responding to that name.” If the exact same name is not kept, the adopter is urged to at least take care to maintain similar sounds in the name. Even for cats, who, of course, live in their own parallel reality.  


When does a human infant begin to recognize their name? When does a child deserve to be treated with the same care, thought, and compassion as a re-homed kitten? 
  
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ruby was born in California, adopted by English parents, and brought up in North London. She’s spent most of her life so far over-achieving, then abandoning her achievements. She spent some years searching for and eventually finding her birth parents. Over the twenty years since then, she has been learning how to deal with some of the trauma from being relinquished, adopted, and never-quite-belonging. The path to healing is long and labyrinthine. She is currently living in self-imposed exile less than twenty miles from the place of her birth, working on a collection of writing. 

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