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

[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.