Name question

[requiem-morrow.livejournal.com]

Vaguely OT, but this seemed like a pretty good place to ask. If a child is abandoned and no one knows its name, where does the name come from? You see stories about hospital personnel naming babies Angel, Precious, or whatever, but where does the child's legal name come from? Particularly its last name? Say a baby is abandoned at a hospital - it is never identified, no one ever claims it - the child can't go through life without a name. Even if they give it a first name, how would a last name be given? Also assuming the child is never adopted, lets say it stays in the foster care system until 18.

Comments

[velkoria.livejournal.com]

Well here in Venezuela there is a default last name the kids that aren't adopted get. I'm guessing it's the same in the US...

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

My grandpa was born (or abandoned, not sure which) at an orphanage in Quebec in 1939. I found his birth/baptismal record online once when I was searching ancestry stuff. There were pages and pages of birth/baptismal records for these orphans. They seemed to give them random, slightly generic names, depending on when they were born... so for a couple months all the babies would get the last name Tremblay, and then for a couple months they'd get the last name Genest, and so on. There didn't seem to be any special reason for the names. But that was Quebec in 1939. I have no idea how it would work now.

Have you tried posting this on little_details? I can almost guarantee you someone over there would have an answer.

[pegasus2o5.livejournal.com]

From what I can tell, a nurse or social worker somewhere along the way will give the child a first name, someone just comes up with something and it sticks. The first foster parents, if no one else, and I think the child's surname also often comes from the first foster parents. I've also heard of all wards-of-the-state being surnamed Ward, but that was in a work of fiction, I don't know if any real state does it that way.

[duckduckcaboose.livejournal.com]

I know a woman who was a ward of the state and her last name is Lawhorn. But perhaps that could be her parents' last name? I don't really know her circumstances.

[rubie-dubidoux.livejournal.com]

I think that's where the last name Ward originally came from way back when, but I'm pretty sure you're right about nowadays it coming from the first foster parents.

I say this from very little inside knowledge. My mom's last name is Ward.

[smasharash.livejournal.com]

Often they are named after the person who found the child.