ADOPTION AND LEGITIMATION meaning in Law Dictionary

doption, correctly talking, relates only to persons that strangers in blood, and is not synonymous with "legitimation," which identifies persons of the same bloodstream. In which one acknowledges his illegitimate son or daughter and takes it into their family and treats it just as if it were genuine, it is not correctly an "adoption" but a "legitimation." Blythe v. Ayrcs, 90 Cal. 532, 31 Pac. 915, 19 L R. A. 40. To accept an alien as a citizen or person in a community or state and invest him with matching legal rights and benefits, either (as a whole and untechnical parlance) by naturalization, or by an act equivalent to naturalization, as in which a white man is "adopted" by an Indian tribe. Hampton v. Mays, 4 Ind. T. 503, 09 S. W. 1115.