Adopted foundlings also have the right to their own identity

Adopted foundlings want the opportunity to take back their biological family name, but the legislation is tight-lipped.

Dear politicians.

I was reunited with my biological family in 2019. I came to Denmark adopted as a lost child in 1976. I now have one burning desire: to be allowed to mark this by taking back my biological family's name and thereby mark my identity towards myself and the outside world.

All over the world there are television programs that in one way or another seek to reunite family members who have been separated for one reason or another. A large part of these are adopted, and under domestic skies the program "Sporløs" has run successfully year after year for decades. The programs reflect that as an adoptee you need your identity, and this cannot be found for everyone in the adoptive family.

According to Chapter 9 of the Names Act, § 9, subsection 3, as an adopted person, you have the right to take a name after your biological family. However, this rule does not apply to all adoptees, because if you are adopted as a foundling, you do not have paper that can connect you to your biological family.

Although the current version of the Names Act is not older than 2021, the legislation has not been updated with the latest technology within the parameters of genealogy. Since 2006, the possibility of genealogical family research has become more and more widespread, and foundlings now have the opportunity to find their biological relatives via DNA tests. DNA tests have thus given foundlings the opportunity to be reunited with their biological family, and in recent years several documentary programs and articles have documented how many adoptions have taken place illegally. This has increasingly caused many adoptees to ask questions about their own adoption, and thus the question of identity arises and not least the need for one's own identity. A name is very much a part of a person's identity, because without our names we are nobody or anything.

With us adoptees who have been reunited with their biological family via DNA testing, there may be a desire and need to take back either their entire original birth name or perhaps just the family name in the biological lineage. Unfortunately, the current legislation restricts this just wish.

Some might argue that if the original birth certificate can be found, this must be able to be used, but here I must first point out that not all the countries from which Denmark adopts have equally developed an administrative filing system as we have here at home. Secondly, that as a lost child there are no documents linking a child with a concrete birth certificate, as a lost child is typically assigned a fictitious adoption name by the local authorities, as the authorities do not know the identity of a lost child. This option is therefore waived.

While dna tests are useful as reliable evidence both in family court cases and in criminal investigations to identify perpetrators, dna is currently not approved to confirm family affiliation between adoptees and biological family, so that you as an adoptee can use such evidence to take your name back. It must be possible to change it fairly simply by simply accepting a DNA test's confirmation of family affiliation.