This weekend, I attended an adoptive parent preparation course. It is a prerequisite for adoption, and is to be completed prior to the home study. Just for clarity - this was a course for people intending to adopt children age 3 and up. Someone asked the facilitator (a social worker, herself) if the adopted child takes the family's last name, or keeps their birth surname. The facilitator said that the child takes the family's last name, and then added, "I would also change the child's middle name. Absolutely." I was kind of thrown a bit (not necessarily in a bad way, I just wasn't expecting it, kwim?) and wondered if this is a common practice. What would be the purpose of changing the child's middle name? Would it be for security/safety reasons? The facilitator also said that for children with very unique names (see the naming thread over in the Lounge for examples!), she would even consider changing the child's first name. She said this is fairly rare, but she has seen it done, particularly in cases where safety is a major concern. She added that there was a situation where the child had been given her mother's name, and the child was later abused by that mother. When she was later adopted, the child did not want to keep the name, so the adoptive family changed her name.

OK so that got a little off track, but just to come back to the original point, is it standard practice to change an older child's middle name at time of adoption?

TIA!