Search For A Thesis Title

 When I presented my thesis topic to the Academy of Art University’s Midpoint Committee it was called, Finding Home: The Truth About Older Child Adoption. At first I did not have any problems with it because I thought it was straight-forward; I thought it worked pretty well. Later I realized that it was bland, perhaps too straight-forward and it is not memorable. I also received a comment that the subtitle, “The Truth About Older Child Adoption” sounded more like “The Truth About Used Cars”. Then I realized that I had to think of a new name. I did not want any negative connotations on my thesis’ name. It should be creative and memorable. I hoped to find a word that I can give a new important meaning, something that will not be lost in the clutter.

I listed all the words that I can think of that are related to adoption, foster care, family, home, love, search, etc. I used the dictionary and thesaurus to search for words and made mind maps. Some words made sense, some didn’t. At that point t didn’t matter, I just had to get it out of my head. I tried to avoid the obvious but the word akin stood out to me more than the others. Akin is not as creative than I thought but the more I think about it, it became more meaningful to me. It also occurred to me that it means “my own” in my mother tongue, Tagalog. Akin can translate into “my own child”, “my own parent” and “my own  family”. It seemed perfect but I would still love people’s opinion about this title. I wanted to know if it makes sense to others as much as it makes sense to me and how familiar everyone else is about the word: Akin.

Below are some of the other titles that I thought of:

• Dock Adoptions
• 360 Families  
• Fuse Families 
• Abiding Haven 
• Abiding Embrace 
• Found Families
• Boundless Harbor