What's In A Name?

Leee-uuhmmm.
Leeeuhm.
Leeumm.
Liam. Liam. Liam. Liam.
My son has under 10 words that he can clearly say and be understood.
His name is one of them.
Liam.
Liam. Liam. Liam.
He says his name about 673 times a day- in different tones, in different cadences, as a part of bigger and more grand statements. But always and forever, the "Liam".
And I love it.
It's not annoying at all, and I am not being sarcastic. It's truly not.
It's endearing and cute and lovable.
Liam. Liam. Liam. Liam.
And as I listen to his little song of self, hour after hour and day after day, I am eternally grateful that we chose that particular name for him.
We knew he was cleft affected and we knew speech would be an issue and it was of utmost importance that he have a name that he could pronounce. Luckily we have always liked the name Liam. And he kind of looked like a Liam, in a Chinese kind of way.
And so he is Liam. And he knows he is Liam. And he can say it.
He doesn't like to be called anything else. His family nick name? Moosh? It's a running joke around here how he will always stop and say, "No Moo. Leee-uummm".
And I have wondered about this.
Maybe it's just because his vocabulary is so severely limited and it's one of the words he can say. And maybe it's because that one word is tied in with his developmental stage, the "me" stage.
Yes, all of that might be true but there is a whisper in my heart that tells me it's also something more.
It took him a long time to answer to that name, and during that time, we could not get him to respond to either his Chinese "orphanage nickname" nor his Chinese formal name, and that fact leads me to believe that maybe he wasn't called those names, not really. Maybe he had a different nickname with his foster family. If he did, no one ever told me what it was- I know because that would have been one important fact and I would have burned it into my heart.
He was also called "Zane" in his Love Without Boundaries updates. Again, this is not a name he ever heard, it was just a name that organization used to identify him within their system.
That whisper tells me that he never really had a name. That maybe he was a boy and that was enough until we came along. Maybe not answering to any particular name was a part of his grieving process but there is still that whisper...
That whisper tells me that to his little heart, that name, that word, that sound he learned to associate with himself- maybe that word also means family to him. Maybe it also stands for love and trust and faith and a life that is ever blissfully not changing. Not the big things anyway.
I think this because he never answered or responded to Liam in any meaningful way until we felt like he was settling in, until we felt like some trust was being built up and banked away.
Maybe my husband will read this and think that I am leaning towards the melodramatic again. Maybe you will read this and think that I am full of malarky. But my mother's heart is whispering to me and I listen and, to me, that is the only thing that matters.
To him, his name means: forever, family, love, mama, papa, sissy, mine, me, me too, safety, food, warmth, toys.
To me, his name means that I have a son and he has me.