What’s in a Name?

By Janice Jones
(Author of Dr. Beare’s Daughter: Growing Up Adopted, Adored, and Afraid)

I was four-and-a-half months old in 1947 when I was adopted by Ralph and Lou Beare of Celina, Ohio. My new father was a respected doctor and surgeon, and my new mother was a proud doctor’s wife. They’d already been married fifteen years. They decided to adopt after Lou had a hysterectomy at the age of forty and had to give up her last lingering hope of having “her own.” My parents named me Janice Lucinda. My mother said they chose Janice because it couldn’t be shortened into some “gawd-awful nickname.” and Lucinda after her own first name.

I felt like ducking whenever anyone called me Janice. I felt that I, like my name, was the next near thing to “gawd-awful.” I reasoned that since being adopted was second-best, perhaps I wasn’t deserving of a name that my mother thought was beautiful. I liked my middle name, Lucinda, because my mother had given me her own name, which she thought to be beautiful. As I grew, I realized that she was telling the world I was her own child. I began to think of my middle name as a wishful badge of ownership that she had attached to me, much like a name tag sewn into underwear.

My father never called me Janice. He had two names for me. “Kiddo” and “Damn Ignorant.” He adored his “Kiddo.” But when I didn’t know something that he thought I should, he would rant on cruelly about how I was “Damn Ignorant.”

From the time I was able to walk, he took me with him everywhere, and everyone in town came to know me on sight as “Doctor Beare’s Daughter.” Of all my names, I thought this one was the best. People showed the same respect to Doctor Beare’s Daughter as they did to Doctor Beare. And Doctor Beare’s Daughter was privileged. Her daddy gave her things and opportunities the other kids didn’t have. However, she was an imposter, played by little actress—me.

When I was fifteen and applied for my learner’s permit to drive a car, they asked to see my birth certificate. I hadn’t known that I had one. When I asked my mother for it, she gave me instead a “Certificate of Birth Registration.” This official-looking piece of paper was accepted by government offices in lieu of an actual birth certificate. It states the date and place that Janice Lucinda Beare, a female, was born. That’s all, folks! There was no mention of parents, adopted or otherwise. Every time I looked at it, I
felt like I was Voldemort, in the Harry Potter books—a villain so horrible that he was referred to as: “He-who-must-not-be-named.”

When I went away to camp and to college, I introduced myself as “Jan.” It still didn’t feel quite right, but it seemed somehow to be a bit more me. When I married Jeff Jones, I was happy to take his surname. It identified me as belonging to someone whom I had chosen. And yet, the feeling of being not quite “gawd-awful” stayed with me.

When I was in my mid-thirties, my parents died. Only then did I feel free to inquire about getting my original birth certificate. Things changed in Ohio during the time I did my search. At first, I couldn’t get my original birth certificate unless I presented identification (in person) at Ohio’s Dept of Vital Statistics. This changed to allow requests by mail. However, you had to specify original birth certificate. If you didn’t specify the word original, then you would get an amended one showing your adoptive parents as your parents. I was advised by AIM (Adoption Identity of Michigan) and REUNITE of Ohio that once you requested a birth certificate without specifying original, an amended one was created, and the original one would no longer be available. Fortunately, I was able to obtain mine.

When my original birth certificate came in the mail, I ripped it open and there it was: my birth name. And it was beautiful. And it was so much more.

It was the key to my history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Janice Jones is a US domestic adoptee born in Ohio in 1949. She said it took her until the age of 77 to be able to write about her adoption experience, about how adoption colored every aspect of her life. “Writing my story is the bravest and most healing thing I have ever done,” she said. She encourages other adoptees to share their stories in whatever ways they can.
Janice’s memoir is: “Dr. Beare’s Daughter: Growing Up Adopted, Adored, and Afraid.” Here is the link to the Amazon listing: Dr. Beare’s Daughter

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