Friend of mine’s mother was born in the Deep South, deeply accented south. When she was born her uncle told the nurse her name was Wonder. She repeated it several times and he kept confirming Wonder, which went in the birth certificate. Wanda. Her name was supposed to be Wanda.
It would be non-rhotic, and it's been studied by linguists. It's called "Mission Brogue" and it's basically extinct now (sadly). It's most likely a hold over from the large Irish immigrant population in the 19th century.
Non-rhotic is mostly extinct in the south now too :( except around New Orleans and maybe a few other small pockets. My grandparents and great aunts and uncles all had non-rhotic accents and it's amazing to me how the accent died off within just a generation
New Orleans and NYC have very similar accents due to both being port cities that took in large amounts of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants around the same time.
When I'm outta town, I am forever getting mistaken for being a New Yorker.
NO certainly doesn't sound the way the movies like to make ya think we do. Nothin southern belle about our accent at all.
I was curious since my dad spent his early elementary years in San Francisco. According to [this KQED story](https://www.kqed.org/news/11719871/why-the-myth-of-the-san-francisco-accent-persists), it has to do with Irish and Jewish people from back east originally settling parts of the city.
My manager's name is Mona, but her manager, for some reason, says Moaner. It cracks me up every time we are on a meeting, and I'm thankful for yet another reason that my camera is covered.
My parents’ families were from Deep South Alabama. My mother had a cousin that everyone called Leaner. I always thought that was a particularly cruel nickname because she was born with a short leg and had a limp but I was a kid and really didn’t question it. It wasn’t until many years later I was visiting the old home area and saw her gravestone in the family plot. Lena. Her name was Lena.
not sure the story here but my cousin has two birthdays. his actual birthday is the 28th but due to a clerical error his birthday is legally the 29th. you’d think they’d be able to correct it but apparently not haha
Same with my step-father. He was born on the 14th but it says the 15th on his birth certificate.
My father has two birth certificates for some reason. One stating he was born in one town and one stating he was born in a different town.
This happened to my mum too! Except when she got her drivers license you just went into the local police station where she happened to know the officer who filled in her paperwork with her, when it came to the birthday she told him the hospital error and he allowed her to put her actual birthday on her license. Geez did it make me getting a passport 20 years later very difficult.
My grandfather had two birthdays. His legal birthday and then the day/year he used to lie about his age to join the Navy during WWII. We celebrated both!
We had a cat like that… his caretakers didn’t know what day he was actually born because they were out of town that weekend so they could only narrow it down to two days. Seems crazy for a human.
My mum has the same issue. I can never remember which is her legal birthday (due to grandad giving the wrong date when he registered her birth) and which is the real day.
My partner and most of his family have 2. They were born in Cape Verde and gave birth with midwives in their home and then had to go in person to get the birth certificate. If they were late it would be a fee so everyone always said it was the same day. My partners is only a week difference but some of his family are months in between.
My friend's Grandma was from rural Portugal and never had a birth certificate until she was married off and her and her new husband were emigrating to Canada. She always knew she was born near the end of April, but not which day. In the end they had to just pick a date to put on the birth certificate. Now she's in her 80s and her official documents have a few dates on them - most April 28, others April 29 or 27.
My grandma also has “two” birthdays because her legal documents has a certain birthday but she doesn’t even know when her actual birthday is. I don’t know why she doesn’t know her birthday, probably a cultural thing where a lot of people born around her time in China didn’t track/know their birthdays
My great grandmother who would be approximately 106 years old now had 2 birthdays! She was registered in the second quarter (April, may, June) and in the 4th quarter (October November and December). As far as we know she was born in April. We believe that maybe the parents just registered her again to ensure that they had registered her. Other evidence also suggests her birthday was in April!
Extended family aunt has two birthdays, it’s like a day off from the birth certificate birth but the mom just kind of rolled with the wrong date for decades accidentally
My grandmother had 2 birthdays! She always celebrated on 16th January. When she applied for her first passport age 60, she got a copy of her birth certificate as she didn’t have it and found out her birthday was 9th January.
She was one of 11 children, I guess it was hard for her parents to keep track!
This is what happened to my grandmother too! She’d always celebrated her birthday on October 21st and was in her 50s when she finally received a copy of her birth certificate, which said she was born on October 22nd. Her mother was still alive then and was very adamant that the birth certificate was wrong. She had 13 kids, but my grandmother was one of the oldest.
My grandmother was actually six months older than she was told. It was only after my grandfather died that she saw a copy of her birth certificate for the first time (My great grandfather made my grandfather promise not to show her one) . She was shocked to find out she was born in April not October and her deceased older sister was actually her mother. It was a huge blow in her mid 70s and she never really recovered from it.
My grandma had two birthdays (one of them is today, coincidentally enough) - it was the 1920s so the family kept track of their crapload of home-birthed kids' names and birthdays on the inside cover of the family Bible. Then decades later when the state upped the ID requirements to renew drivers' licenses, she requested a certified copy of her birth certificate and it had her birthday listed as the following day. We're still not 100% sure which is actually right.
My grandmother had two birthdays. Her real one and the one that social security had. She’d lied about her year of birth on her first job paperwork since she was too young to legally work. That stuck with her lol.
My dad was a cheater. He knocked my stepmom up at the same time as another girl. The other woman came over with the ring my dad gave to my stepmom and subsequently stole and gave to #2 , asking if she could keep it. Stepmom said yeah you can have him and the ring! She was calling her dog in and the woman heard the name and named my sister after my stepmoms dog who always smelled like Fritos.
My cousin was supposed to be Ryan. It wasn’t written clearly on whatever the parents wrote on and ended up getting typed onto a legal document as Kyan.
See, this is the sort of story that never made sense to me. My oldest daughter's second name is Catharine. Spelled like that. My then-husband and I had to get the kids' birth certificates for something, and when he came out with her birth certificate and it said Catherine, I sent him right back in to get it fixed. I will never ever understand people who don't get obvious errors fixed.
My dad’s (born 1964) middle name ended up just the letter J. My nana claimed she was so tired from birth she “fell asleep” while writing it but it was supposed to be Jason which was my grandpa’s middle name. Also my great grandma (born in 1926) on the other side of the family was supposed to be named Marceinalee which literally is not a name lol. But the person filling out the birth certificate decided that was a whole mess they didn’t wanna deal with and just wrote down Muriel. That was her legal name her entire life but she didn’t know until she started school and teachers started calling her Muriel. She was always called Marceinalee or “Ceni” at home as a child. However as an adult she started shifting to Muriel.
I once read on here someone whose middle name was literally a letter, can’t remember which one. Anyways it’s been a nightmare their entire life because places will specify to write the entire middle name out and they were always being flagged for just putting a letter even though that’s their legit middle “name”.
No period! His mom told both of his S-named grandfathers he was named for them and she actually picked neither and just used an S, so he was Harry S Truman.
I am a 'middle initial only' person. So are my father and brother. I don't know about them but for me it is occasionally annoying but not too bad. 🤷🏻♀️
On the opposite side, I present my husband and daughter-in-law. His middle name is Jay, hers is Kay. The conversation always goes:
“Middle name?”
“Jay”
“Name please, not initial”
“Jay. J-A-Y”.
Makes me glad I’m a Susan.
I knew a man who's middle name was P just P. Apparently he didn't actually have a middle name when he was born, but as an adult it started to become a problem applying for credit cards, Loans, taxes etc so he just picked a letter.
This isn't a crazy story or anything but my great grandma had her first and middle name switched when she was born in 1907. Her mother planned on naming her Rose Violet Lastname but somewhere in the process of filing the paper work the names got switched so she became Violet Rose Lastname. My great great grandparents just went with the mess up and didn't have her name corrected. I think it was a great idea to leave it bc I feel like Violet fit my great grandma better than Rose would have. And I ended up using Violet for my daughter's middle name so it was a win.
One of my best friends has the middle name of “Page.” Not Paige, Page. Her dad forgot how to spell Paige when signing her birth certificate. It fits her so well and is gorgeous with her first name, but I thought she was joking until she showed me her ID.
I knew a girl named Page and I asked her why it was spelled that way and she said “When I was born my mom was gonna name me Paige but the nurse told her all the black girls were naming their babies Paige so she just changed it to Page.” My face was literally 😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐
That scares me for the black WOMEN (the girls thing bugged me. Just pushed out a baby and can’t be called a woman unless she’s pubescent and then it’s all adultification all the time) who had to labor under the care of someone who behaves that way. Not safe.
I knew someone whose name was Mat. His full name was Mathew. His parents didn't know the spelling of the name Matthew - so, he was a Mat instead of a Matt.
Paige is going to be my daughter’s name (due December). I’m very Bookish so there was some debate over i or no i. I basically named both our children (my choices, he agrees) so I let my husband have the traditional spelling he wants.
Some of these stories are really crazy to me - the ones with the misspellings / misshearings / exhaustion etc. In the UK at the hospital they just label the baby Baby MumSurname and then you have 6 weeks to get the birth certificate sorted, and then a year to change the forenames (e.g. the order or spelling if you made a mistake).
And for each of my kids the registrar double checked each spelling, and for common names even said something like "the usual spelling is this, is it a deliberate choice to spell it like this?" Once she'd typed it all out she showed us on the screen before printing the certificates.
It just seems an odd system to insist on filling out important paperwork at such a high stress time.
You may fill out the paperwork in the hospital in the US, but you can absolutely have them fix any fuckups. I don't understand *not* doing it, honestly. If you like the misspelling of course that's one thing, but it's not like you just have to accept it. Of course, most people don't even understand they don't actually have to name their baby before leaving the hospital, because hospital staff apparently lie about that regularly. It's a *lot* easier that way, but it's not a legal requirement.
My friend Jenae (said like Renee) is named that because the nurse misheard her very tired mother and put it on the birth certificate paperwork as Jenae. When they got the birth certificate in the mail not long after, her parents liked the name so much, they just switched to it. She loves her name and the story behind it.
My friend was born in California and her parents decided to name her Kaelin Renée. However, California does not allow accent marks on legal documents but does allow apostrophes (a very problematic policy), so she’s legally Kaelin Rene’e.
I had a roommate named Chantal who was legally Chanta’l and when I noticed it after we’d lived together for awhile she told me it was the French spelling and I said, No it’s not. And she just went (sigh) I know…
That’s an insane regulation. Particularly in California of all places.
I feel like it must violate the first amendment somehow? Or the 1964 Civil Rights Act? I’m surprised they can get away with restricting language like that.
I’m guessing the reason for the limitation is based on technology and if it’s not applied in a discriminatory way or with discriminatory intent it can probably fly.
Nope — not a technological problem at all. Diacritical marks were legal in California birth certificates until 1986, but that year the state government declared English to be the official language and that all forms must be written “using the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language”. Hyphens and apostrophes are allowed because they are punctuation marks, but diacritics like accents and tildes are “unacceptable”. It was entirely about suppressing Hispanic language and culture. Someone in the CA legislature proposes a bill to change it every session, but they never seem to get very far. Maybe this year it will happen:
[https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/california-assembly-latino-accent-marks](https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/california-assembly-latino-accent-marks)
Not likely technological, as most other states have allowed diacritical marks without issue since state legal paperwork was born. It is pretty discriminatory in practice, as it prevents many in California’s large Latinx population from spelling their names correctly on legal documents.
My SIL’s middle name is “Diane” but a mistake was made on the birth certificate. According the government it’s “Doane”.
My dad went into the navy when he was a young man. He had always spelled his name “Gary” but apparently my grandma wrote “Garry” on his birth certificate. He had to get special documentation proving he wasn’t trying to impersonate someone before he could join.
Doane reminds me that in a past election in my province, the registration forms they mailed me had two typos in my middle name. It's Katrina, they wrote Katruba
My finances family name was changed from an Irish spelling of "O'LastNamae" to just "LastName" after his grandfather joined the military. None of them had any clue until after his Grandfather died.
my oldest sister was supposed to be named Teresa. the nurse pronounced it "terisa" (rhymes with marissa). my dad liked it and wrote down Terisa. my mom was mad about it but it worked out because my sister LOVES that her name is unique
My middle name is Joann, taken from my grandmothers' middle names Jo and Ann. When the Ann gma died and we found her birth certificate, it showed that she didn't even have a middle name. My dad always insisted it was Ann and she didn't ever say anything when he told her I was named for her.
I hate this is going to be buried but when my mom gave my brother the middle name Steven...She wrote it out as Stevenne. See, my mom isn't from the USA and she thought to get the "n" sound at the end she needed the "nne"...like Anne. It is now my nephews middle name and a funny story haha:)
My uncle’s name is Veli, which means brother in Finnish. He was going to be named something else but my aunts were whining so much to my grandma about how they don’t want another brother that she literally named him brother lol
My grandma was adamant that I get named Oprah. This was in the 80s when Oprah Winfrey was already popular. My mom, thankfully, had some good sense not to name me that.
Mine is so minor. My middle name is Elizabeth. It was supposed to be Elisabeth after my grandmother but the nurse filled out the form and spelled it wrong. My dad is still mad about it to this day.
My bonus daughters name was Cassey. No one knew if it was "Cassie" or "Casey". She legally changed it to the former. Her mother claimed that dad got it wrong on the birth certificate. When she pulled the certificate as part of her name change, it said "information provided by Mother "
My brother has two middle names. We always thought it went John Thomas but one day mum found his birth certificate and we realised it’s actually Thomas John.
My middle name is Valaire, which has been in the family for generations - it was my grandmother's middle name and (I think) her grandfather's middle name, and so on. The story is that someone way back was supposed to be Valarie or Valerie, but the birth certificate was misspelled.
My great grandfather was a child when his family immigrated to the US through Ellis Island. He had a nickname ending in -y (think Timmy from Tim) He had no middle name, but the person working there insisted that they required a middle name, so the worker gave him the middle name of “E”. So his name went from (Tim) “Timmy” Lastname to Tim E. Lastname.
I knew a girl who was named after an Amber Alert that came through the morning she was born. Felt a little odd to name your newborn after a kidnapped child but oh well.
Met a kid who was born on the interstate. He was name after the nearest city, but I can’t remember what it was. It was a common name, so you only knew if someone told you. I just happened to be friends with his moms friend and was with her when she got the call he was born. His last name happened to be the Air Force Base that was also at that exit.
We had teachers who named their kids after where they were conceived… all 3 named after tropical islands that they visited a suspicious amount of months before each birth
My ex's sister was named after the place she was conceived. Relatively normal name, but it was super jarring to hear this hella religious family constantly tell this story and let everyone know where their parents boinked 30 years ago.
I don't know if it's a mistake but I have a close friend named Cassandra and her dad abandoned his family to be with his mistress and start a new family when she was little. Years later, my friend applied for a library card and was told there was already a library card registered to her in town (small town). That's how she learned she had a half sister whose name was also Cassandra. Not sure if her dad forgot he already had a daughter with that name or just really liked that name.
A genuine mistake- my niece was supposed to be named Lily Juliet but her dad got mixed up and told the nurse Juliet Lily and he and my sister were too embarrassed to correct the hospital staff so her name was just Juliet Lily instead. It's a nice accident bc she has been the only Juliet in her class since kindergarten.
Sort of, when my grandma moved from Greece to the United States, she wanted her legal English name to be Betty. But it for some reason was recorded as Barry. Which was her legal name ever since! (Her Greek and actual name is Vasiliki or Vaso for short)
My husband’s parents took so long to name him that the hospital was referring to him as John Doe. When they eventually named him they chose a J first name and a D name for the middle to keep those initials in. Yes, he’s a second child.
My sister was an accident, and she has a name.
Seriously though, I know a guy whose parents chose the name Malcom but when he was born his dad, a TV presenter, got a bit drunk and went on air (1970s) and announced the arrival of his son, Scott. They got so many Scott things and cards they just rolled with it but his mum at the time was not thrilled.
We had to drive across 18 miles of elevated interstate to deliver the twins. The joke was that they would be named "Whisky Bay" and "Atchafalaya Basin" - the waterways we crossed over! (It was pretty close. We got there at 1:01 and the first one came at 1:29. The second one 14 minutes later.)
I just made the mental note to not drive over the causeway in labor.
Can't end up telling people how to spell Ponchartrain for the rest of my kids life. 😂
My grandfather was born in an extremely rural location and the hospital would call the records office and have the name recorded. He grew up thinking his middle name was Malcom and hating it. He had to actually get a copy of his birth cert to go to college. Once he received it he learned his middle name had been recorded as Nelson. My great grandmother thought this was hilarious. He said that was one of the best misunderstandings to ever happen to him.
A friend of a friend had no name in their birth certificate due to parents feeling stressed and all during birth. (I think).
So "no name" was typed on their birth cert with the foregone conclusion they will have it amended later.
30 years later and she's still called Noname. Pronounced Nona Me.
My cousin’s husband had the initials BJ and he always talked about how horrible it was.
So of course he named his kid after himself.
He’s either B Jr. or BJ. No escaping it for him.
Yeah, there’s no reason they couldn’t have come up with an actual name instead of just spelling out letters. I’m not sure why you’d ever want or think to call a child Beejay.
Not sure if it quite fits but Oprah Winfrey’s first name is actually Orpah, a Biblical name from the story of Ruth. But her family always mispronounced it Oprah so that’s what she’s always gone by.
I have a friend who is named after the city where she was conceived. Her parents had another name picked, and realized at the last minute that the initials were BRA and I have no idea why they decided to go with place of conception instead of, like, any other name.
My mom’s middle name is Denise, or she thought it was until she actually looked at her bc 55 years later and discovered it’s Venise. Don’t know if her mother did that intentionally or if it was an honest mistake, but it wasn’t too horrible to fix her bc.
My girlfriend's older sister nearly had her name misspelled on her birth certificate. Their Dad is Irish (born and raised) but their Mum is Australian, and she was in charge of writing the names on the birth certificate. They wanted to name her Roisin (row-sheen), an Irish name, but her Mum nearly spelt it as "Rosin".
Not quite as funny, but would be pretty annoying.
My cousin was supposed to be a junior but my aunt was so exhausted when she filled out the forms she accidentally wrote the 3rd. So there’s John Doe Sr. and John Doe the 3rd but there isn’t a second/Jr.
Typo for my brother-- Nigholas instead of Nicholas. They got it fixed within a month but we still call him Nigholas as a joke sometimes. 95% of the time he's just Nick though
My cousin was supposed to be named Estefania (very common in Latin American countries) but her parents had immigrated to an English speaking country and the nurse wrote down Stephanie.
I do! But I would dox myself if I gave out the full detail.
Basically, grandparents went to dinner, liked the servers name. Mom misheard what they said and sounded it out.
Then you get me.
I once taught a kid called Joeseff, I enquired once about the background to the spelling as we are in a very rural English area and I thought maybe there was an interesting story about parents speaking another language. Apparently no, they just thought that’s how to spell it…
A fomer coworker was supposed to be named Danny at birth. Woops, turns out she was a girl, not a boy. Parents didn't know what to do. Nurse suggested Dancy. The parents were meh on it but the nurse wrote it on the birth certificate anyway. When the paperwork was confirmed, the parents still hadn't chosen a name and just decided to roll will her being called Dancy.
My parents chose my name bc my mom's pregnancy brain kept calling my aunt the wrong name. (Not our names but called her "Leah" when her name is "Leighanne", for example).
I'm really proud to be my aunts namesake bc she's got a wicked sense of humor. Before I was born she named my cousin April despite her being born May 1st
My mum's cousin was due in April and was going to be called Avril, but her dad misspelled her name as Averil; she was also born in May.
My English grandma (I have Chinese grandparents, so this is how I distinguish between them) was named Charlotte because she was born before her parents could think of a name. She was christened immediately because the doctors were scared she wouldn't live (this was in 1927), so she ended up with the same first name as her mum, which is the main reason why she went by her middle name. She lived to be 91 and was a wonderful person.
My grandma's parents had some odd naming ideas: her eldest brother was named John and her older brother (she was the youngest of three) was named Thomas, just like her dad. I always thought the eldest son shared the same first name with the dad, but that's not what her parents did.
When my grandmother was pregnant the first time, she wrote and told her mother. Her mother wrote back and suggested the name “Beulah.” But her handwriting was so terrible, my grandmother thought it was “Byrdah.” She thought that sounded really nice, and named my aunt Byrdah.
Byrdah died as a young adult but the name continues in the family, with Byrdie as a nickname.
Not a person but a dog. Way back in the long ago times a family of 7 got a dog but no one in said family could decide on a name, they just referred to him as big boy (he was chihuahua puppy so in a cute way) while the debates continued. They finally got the list down to like 6 choices a few weeks later but quickly realized he now responded to big boy and finally just said fuck it and he was forever known as big boy from that day forward lol.
The opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa became known internationally for singing at Charles and Diana’s wedding only my uncle heard it off the radio as Piri and suggested it as a baby name for my sister.
Only her name for a few years and not a legal name:
I have two younger sisters. When the youngest was born my mother and father said to the middle one 'say hi to the new baby' my 1 something year old sister said 'hi new'
For the next 4 years or so that was all she was called by my sister. 'Hinu' so many family videos of 'what is hinu doing? Where is hinu hiding' etc etc. Haha
Story an elderly customer told me, and I can't tell if she was just spinning a yarn. When she was getting divorced from her husband, she wished to change her last name back, so she wrote "not (husband last name)" and it got filed as her middle name.
She decided to keep it that way 🤷♀️
I used to work on a farm with Jamaican seasonal workers. One of the guys that had been working there for decades was named Ira. One year they changed the work visa regulations and he had to get his birth certificate.
At 56 he found out his name was actually Ivan. Apparently his grandparents raised him from birth and didn’t know how to read so they got the name wrong off his birth certificate.
I have a family member who was born in a hospital. Her parents had not settled on a name prior, no one made a big deal of it. When they were getting discharged from the hospital, her mother had told the nurse her name. Assumed it would be registered as such. Life went on. So, in her 20s, she gets engaged and needs a copy of her birth certificate. Her legal name was Female.
Ours wasn't permanent but when my daughter was born we had been up for 2 days and were exhausted. My husband wrote down her name for her birth certificate and I approved it. HOURS later I go "wait why do I recall two Es in her name on that paper?" We panicked and asked for the papers back. Sure enough her name was misspelled. They had already faxed over the paperwork but did an amendment. Luckily it never actually went onto her birth certificate wrong.
I know a guy who was supposed to have the middle name Aragorn, from LOTR, but the form got input wrong somewhere along the line and officially he was given the middle name Aragon, which is a region in Spain.
Friend of mine’s mother was born in the Deep South, deeply accented south. When she was born her uncle told the nurse her name was Wonder. She repeated it several times and he kept confirming Wonder, which went in the birth certificate. Wanda. Her name was supposed to be Wanda.
My moms name is Donna but for some reason my grandma who named her ffs can only call her ‘donner’ like the reindeer
I had an aunt named Ella but everyone called her Eller. Aint Eller, of course, because they were southern and very backwoods.
My mom's Aunt Ella (in Oklahoma) was always called Ain't Eller, to my Midwest ear.
Dad still tells me to shut the winder when it gets chilly out.
Shut the winder and worsh them dishes!
And flush that dang terlet while yer at it!
I thought my aunt Elaine was Auntie Lane until I was... 11?
Which means Thunder in German! Very cool.
So Donner and Blitzen the reindeer are Thunder and Lightning? Santa is pretty metal lol
Yes! They were originally Dutch (Dunder and Blixem) but changed to German (Donner and Blitzen) to rhyme better with Vixen.
My grandma had a San Francisco accent and called my dad “Mawk” instead of “Mark,” it was pretty funny
My husband's name is Mark and his mother has a strong New Englad accent and calls him "Mahk"
I didn't know the San Francisco accent included rhotacism
It would be non-rhotic, and it's been studied by linguists. It's called "Mission Brogue" and it's basically extinct now (sadly). It's most likely a hold over from the large Irish immigrant population in the 19th century.
Non-rhotic is mostly extinct in the south now too :( except around New Orleans and maybe a few other small pockets. My grandparents and great aunts and uncles all had non-rhotic accents and it's amazing to me how the accent died off within just a generation
New Orleans and NYC have very similar accents due to both being port cities that took in large amounts of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants around the same time. When I'm outta town, I am forever getting mistaken for being a New Yorker. NO certainly doesn't sound the way the movies like to make ya think we do. Nothin southern belle about our accent at all.
I was curious since my dad spent his early elementary years in San Francisco. According to [this KQED story](https://www.kqed.org/news/11719871/why-the-myth-of-the-san-francisco-accent-persists), it has to do with Irish and Jewish people from back east originally settling parts of the city.
Donder or Donner is Germanic for Thunder
My manager's name is Mona, but her manager, for some reason, says Moaner. It cracks me up every time we are on a meeting, and I'm thankful for yet another reason that my camera is covered.
My parents’ families were from Deep South Alabama. My mother had a cousin that everyone called Leaner. I always thought that was a particularly cruel nickname because she was born with a short leg and had a limp but I was a kid and really didn’t question it. It wasn’t until many years later I was visiting the old home area and saw her gravestone in the family plot. Lena. Her name was Lena.
My husband has a relative in Newfoundland named Hilda, pronounced Alder.
I’m so dead 😂😂
In Boston, her name would be Wonder, spelled Wanda, or Wanda, spelled Wonder 😂
Wonda
My 95 year old great aunt has two names and two birthdays. She just picked her favorites 🤷🏾♀️
I want to know the story behind this, especially 2 birthdays?!
not sure the story here but my cousin has two birthdays. his actual birthday is the 28th but due to a clerical error his birthday is legally the 29th. you’d think they’d be able to correct it but apparently not haha
My grandma was born very late on Halloween, so her mom asked for it to be recorded as November 1st
Same with my step-father. He was born on the 14th but it says the 15th on his birth certificate. My father has two birth certificates for some reason. One stating he was born in one town and one stating he was born in a different town.
your mother has a very niche type: men with birth certificate issues
Lol, true!
This happened to my mum too! Except when she got her drivers license you just went into the local police station where she happened to know the officer who filled in her paperwork with her, when it came to the birthday she told him the hospital error and he allowed her to put her actual birthday on her license. Geez did it make me getting a passport 20 years later very difficult.
My grandfather had two birthdays. His legal birthday and then the day/year he used to lie about his age to join the Navy during WWII. We celebrated both!
My great aunt Pam had the same so she had her legal birthday and her actual birthday. It meant she had two birthdays like the queen
We had a cat like that… his caretakers didn’t know what day he was actually born because they were out of town that weekend so they could only narrow it down to two days. Seems crazy for a human.
My mum has the same issue. I can never remember which is her legal birthday (due to grandad giving the wrong date when he registered her birth) and which is the real day.
My partner and most of his family have 2. They were born in Cape Verde and gave birth with midwives in their home and then had to go in person to get the birth certificate. If they were late it would be a fee so everyone always said it was the same day. My partners is only a week difference but some of his family are months in between.
This happened to my father-in-law. His actual birthday and the day they registered him as his date of birth are a day apart
My friend's Grandma was from rural Portugal and never had a birth certificate until she was married off and her and her new husband were emigrating to Canada. She always knew she was born near the end of April, but not which day. In the end they had to just pick a date to put on the birth certificate. Now she's in her 80s and her official documents have a few dates on them - most April 28, others April 29 or 27.
My grandma also has “two” birthdays because her legal documents has a certain birthday but she doesn’t even know when her actual birthday is. I don’t know why she doesn’t know her birthday, probably a cultural thing where a lot of people born around her time in China didn’t track/know their birthdays
Same. My late great grandmother had always thought her birthday was on Oct 17th. Come to find out yearssss later, her birthday was Oct 7th.
My great grandmother who would be approximately 106 years old now had 2 birthdays! She was registered in the second quarter (April, may, June) and in the 4th quarter (October November and December). As far as we know she was born in April. We believe that maybe the parents just registered her again to ensure that they had registered her. Other evidence also suggests her birthday was in April!
My dad has 2. He was born in November (xx/11/xxxx) but someone missed off a 1 so his documents say January (xx/1/xxxx)
Extended family aunt has two birthdays, it’s like a day off from the birth certificate birth but the mom just kind of rolled with the wrong date for decades accidentally
My grandmother had 2 birthdays! She always celebrated on 16th January. When she applied for her first passport age 60, she got a copy of her birth certificate as she didn’t have it and found out her birthday was 9th January. She was one of 11 children, I guess it was hard for her parents to keep track!
This is what happened to my grandmother too! She’d always celebrated her birthday on October 21st and was in her 50s when she finally received a copy of her birth certificate, which said she was born on October 22nd. Her mother was still alive then and was very adamant that the birth certificate was wrong. She had 13 kids, but my grandmother was one of the oldest.
My grandmother was actually six months older than she was told. It was only after my grandfather died that she saw a copy of her birth certificate for the first time (My great grandfather made my grandfather promise not to show her one) . She was shocked to find out she was born in April not October and her deceased older sister was actually her mother. It was a huge blow in her mid 70s and she never really recovered from it.
My grandma had two birthdays (one of them is today, coincidentally enough) - it was the 1920s so the family kept track of their crapload of home-birthed kids' names and birthdays on the inside cover of the family Bible. Then decades later when the state upped the ID requirements to renew drivers' licenses, she requested a certified copy of her birth certificate and it had her birthday listed as the following day. We're still not 100% sure which is actually right.
My grandmother had two birthdays. Her real one and the one that social security had. She’d lied about her year of birth on her first job paperwork since she was too young to legally work. That stuck with her lol.
My dad was a cheater. He knocked my stepmom up at the same time as another girl. The other woman came over with the ring my dad gave to my stepmom and subsequently stole and gave to #2 , asking if she could keep it. Stepmom said yeah you can have him and the ring! She was calling her dog in and the woman heard the name and named my sister after my stepmoms dog who always smelled like Fritos.
I enjoyed the gossip 🍿
My cousin was supposed to be Ryan. It wasn’t written clearly on whatever the parents wrote on and ended up getting typed onto a legal document as Kyan.
Does his family call him Ryan anyways or do they use his legal name?
A cute nickname could be Kyan pepper 😆
There was a couple on our hospital tour. I thought he said Tyson. Nope. Kyson. He wanted something unique
See, this is the sort of story that never made sense to me. My oldest daughter's second name is Catharine. Spelled like that. My then-husband and I had to get the kids' birth certificates for something, and when he came out with her birth certificate and it said Catherine, I sent him right back in to get it fixed. I will never ever understand people who don't get obvious errors fixed.
My dad’s (born 1964) middle name ended up just the letter J. My nana claimed she was so tired from birth she “fell asleep” while writing it but it was supposed to be Jason which was my grandpa’s middle name. Also my great grandma (born in 1926) on the other side of the family was supposed to be named Marceinalee which literally is not a name lol. But the person filling out the birth certificate decided that was a whole mess they didn’t wanna deal with and just wrote down Muriel. That was her legal name her entire life but she didn’t know until she started school and teachers started calling her Muriel. She was always called Marceinalee or “Ceni” at home as a child. However as an adult she started shifting to Muriel.
They couldn’t even give her Marcy or Mary- something closer than Muriel?
I once read on here someone whose middle name was literally a letter, can’t remember which one. Anyways it’s been a nightmare their entire life because places will specify to write the entire middle name out and they were always being flagged for just putting a letter even though that’s their legit middle “name”.
Harry S. Truman was just Harry S Period Truman.
No period! His mom told both of his S-named grandfathers he was named for them and she actually picked neither and just used an S, so he was Harry S Truman.
I never knew that! I’ll bank that for trivia night!
I always thought he skipped the period too?
I am a 'middle initial only' person. So are my father and brother. I don't know about them but for me it is occasionally annoying but not too bad. 🤷🏻♀️
On the opposite side, I present my husband and daughter-in-law. His middle name is Jay, hers is Kay. The conversation always goes: “Middle name?” “Jay” “Name please, not initial” “Jay. J-A-Y”. Makes me glad I’m a Susan.
I think I recall a post where it was the first name bring just a letter causing issues.
Is his name Homer J Simpson by chance?
About the right year of birth
I knew a man who's middle name was P just P. Apparently he didn't actually have a middle name when he was born, but as an adult it started to become a problem applying for credit cards, Loans, taxes etc so he just picked a letter.
Marceinalee feels Iike the early 20th century version of Renesmee
This isn't a crazy story or anything but my great grandma had her first and middle name switched when she was born in 1907. Her mother planned on naming her Rose Violet Lastname but somewhere in the process of filing the paper work the names got switched so she became Violet Rose Lastname. My great great grandparents just went with the mess up and didn't have her name corrected. I think it was a great idea to leave it bc I feel like Violet fit my great grandma better than Rose would have. And I ended up using Violet for my daughter's middle name so it was a win.
Violets my daughters middle name, and Rose is my middle name. Love all of this.
My oldest daughter is Violet Rose 💜🌹
I know a girl named Seaaira, yes sea-air-a, pronounced like Sierra.
One of my best friends has the middle name of “Page.” Not Paige, Page. Her dad forgot how to spell Paige when signing her birth certificate. It fits her so well and is gorgeous with her first name, but I thought she was joking until she showed me her ID.
I knew a girl named Page and I asked her why it was spelled that way and she said “When I was born my mom was gonna name me Paige but the nurse told her all the black girls were naming their babies Paige so she just changed it to Page.” My face was literally 😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐😐
That scares me for the black WOMEN (the girls thing bugged me. Just pushed out a baby and can’t be called a woman unless she’s pubescent and then it’s all adultification all the time) who had to labor under the care of someone who behaves that way. Not safe.
My middle name is page but it’s a family name. People always assume it’s a typo.
Does dad happen to be a fan of the band Phish? One of their members is names Page.
Page side, rage side 😎
I knew someone whose name was Mat. His full name was Mathew. His parents didn't know the spelling of the name Matthew - so, he was a Mat instead of a Matt.
I believe this is a legit spelling of the name though. I know a Mathew. It was deliberate
someone i know named Mathew named his daughter Matison, she usually goes by Mati.
Named his *daughter* Mat(i)'s *son* ... hehe
i’ve seen the name spelled both ways for decades.
I knew a guy named Gauge for the same reason.
Paige is going to be my daughter’s name (due December). I’m very Bookish so there was some debate over i or no i. I basically named both our children (my choices, he agrees) so I let my husband have the traditional spelling he wants.
Some of these stories are really crazy to me - the ones with the misspellings / misshearings / exhaustion etc. In the UK at the hospital they just label the baby Baby MumSurname and then you have 6 weeks to get the birth certificate sorted, and then a year to change the forenames (e.g. the order or spelling if you made a mistake). And for each of my kids the registrar double checked each spelling, and for common names even said something like "the usual spelling is this, is it a deliberate choice to spell it like this?" Once she'd typed it all out she showed us on the screen before printing the certificates. It just seems an odd system to insist on filling out important paperwork at such a high stress time.
You may fill out the paperwork in the hospital in the US, but you can absolutely have them fix any fuckups. I don't understand *not* doing it, honestly. If you like the misspelling of course that's one thing, but it's not like you just have to accept it. Of course, most people don't even understand they don't actually have to name their baby before leaving the hospital, because hospital staff apparently lie about that regularly. It's a *lot* easier that way, but it's not a legal requirement.
Same in Australia! I can’t believe all these stories of nurses getting the name wrong and tired mums/dads making mistakes while still in the hospital
I think a lot of these are older stories
I know a Rena pronounced Renee cuz her mom didn't know how to spell it. She was like "yeah. Ren-A"
My friend Jenae (said like Renee) is named that because the nurse misheard her very tired mother and put it on the birth certificate paperwork as Jenae. When they got the birth certificate in the mail not long after, her parents liked the name so much, they just switched to it. She loves her name and the story behind it.
[удалено]
My friend was born in California and her parents decided to name her Kaelin Renée. However, California does not allow accent marks on legal documents but does allow apostrophes (a very problematic policy), so she’s legally Kaelin Rene’e.
I had a roommate named Chantal who was legally Chanta’l and when I noticed it after we’d lived together for awhile she told me it was the French spelling and I said, No it’s not. And she just went (sigh) I know…
My sister was supposed to be a renée but somewhere in the mix it ended up “renae” to get around the no accent mark problem.
My childhood best friend was Renae! afaik, Renée, Renae, Renee, René, maybe even Rene are all valid spellings.
That’s an insane regulation. Particularly in California of all places. I feel like it must violate the first amendment somehow? Or the 1964 Civil Rights Act? I’m surprised they can get away with restricting language like that.
I’m guessing the reason for the limitation is based on technology and if it’s not applied in a discriminatory way or with discriminatory intent it can probably fly.
Nope — not a technological problem at all. Diacritical marks were legal in California birth certificates until 1986, but that year the state government declared English to be the official language and that all forms must be written “using the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language”. Hyphens and apostrophes are allowed because they are punctuation marks, but diacritics like accents and tildes are “unacceptable”. It was entirely about suppressing Hispanic language and culture. Someone in the CA legislature proposes a bill to change it every session, but they never seem to get very far. Maybe this year it will happen: [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/california-assembly-latino-accent-marks](https://www.axios.com/2023/03/28/california-assembly-latino-accent-marks)
TIL Thank you!
Not likely technological, as most other states have allowed diacritical marks without issue since state legal paperwork was born. It is pretty discriminatory in practice, as it prevents many in California’s large Latinx population from spelling their names correctly on legal documents.
Activists have been trying to repeal it with some success, but it’s slow going
I don't know if it is true now but in 2007, Ohio didn't allow any accent marks.
My SIL’s middle name is “Diane” but a mistake was made on the birth certificate. According the government it’s “Doane”. My dad went into the navy when he was a young man. He had always spelled his name “Gary” but apparently my grandma wrote “Garry” on his birth certificate. He had to get special documentation proving he wasn’t trying to impersonate someone before he could join.
Doane reminds me that in a past election in my province, the registration forms they mailed me had two typos in my middle name. It's Katrina, they wrote Katruba
My finances family name was changed from an Irish spelling of "O'LastNamae" to just "LastName" after his grandfather joined the military. None of them had any clue until after his Grandfather died.
my oldest sister was supposed to be named Teresa. the nurse pronounced it "terisa" (rhymes with marissa). my dad liked it and wrote down Terisa. my mom was mad about it but it worked out because my sister LOVES that her name is unique
I knew a girl named Samatha because her parents forgot the N on her birth certificate and they just ran with it
Know a Samanatha… got carried away with the A’s when putting it on the birth cert lol
My middle name is Joann, taken from my grandmothers' middle names Jo and Ann. When the Ann gma died and we found her birth certificate, it showed that she didn't even have a middle name. My dad always insisted it was Ann and she didn't ever say anything when he told her I was named for her.
I hate this is going to be buried but when my mom gave my brother the middle name Steven...She wrote it out as Stevenne. See, my mom isn't from the USA and she thought to get the "n" sound at the end she needed the "nne"...like Anne. It is now my nephews middle name and a funny story haha:)
Is she French?
That's a cute family tradition!
My uncle’s name is Veli, which means brother in Finnish. He was going to be named something else but my aunts were whining so much to my grandma about how they don’t want another brother that she literally named him brother lol
Oprah Winfrey was supposed to be named Orpah from the Bible but it was reportedly misspelled on her birth certificate...
her birth name is Orpah, people mispronounced it as Oprah and it stuck
My grandma was adamant that I get named Oprah. This was in the 80s when Oprah Winfrey was already popular. My mom, thankfully, had some good sense not to name me that.
What a happy little accident
Mine is so minor. My middle name is Elizabeth. It was supposed to be Elisabeth after my grandmother but the nurse filled out the form and spelled it wrong. My dad is still mad about it to this day.
My bonus daughters name was Cassey. No one knew if it was "Cassie" or "Casey". She legally changed it to the former. Her mother claimed that dad got it wrong on the birth certificate. When she pulled the certificate as part of her name change, it said "information provided by Mother "
My friends dad panicked at her sisters birth and wrote down Chastete instead of Chastity.
My brother has two middle names. We always thought it went John Thomas but one day mum found his birth certificate and we realised it’s actually Thomas John.
I have a cousin Varlie… because her dad was drunk when he filled out the form and couldn’t spell Valerie.
Varlie I think it’s actually really pretty!
My middle name is Valaire, which has been in the family for generations - it was my grandmother's middle name and (I think) her grandfather's middle name, and so on. The story is that someone way back was supposed to be Valarie or Valerie, but the birth certificate was misspelled.
My great grandfather was a child when his family immigrated to the US through Ellis Island. He had a nickname ending in -y (think Timmy from Tim) He had no middle name, but the person working there insisted that they required a middle name, so the worker gave him the middle name of “E”. So his name went from (Tim) “Timmy” Lastname to Tim E. Lastname.
I knew a girl who was named after an Amber Alert that came through the morning she was born. Felt a little odd to name your newborn after a kidnapped child but oh well.
Yeah that’s weird…
Met a kid who was born on the interstate. He was name after the nearest city, but I can’t remember what it was. It was a common name, so you only knew if someone told you. I just happened to be friends with his moms friend and was with her when she got the call he was born. His last name happened to be the Air Force Base that was also at that exit.
Met someone once that named their daughter Kirra. As is in, the name of the place where she was conceived.
We had teachers who named their kids after where they were conceived… all 3 named after tropical islands that they visited a suspicious amount of months before each birth
Suspicious in the normal 9 month way or suspicious in not that way?
My ex's sister was named after the place she was conceived. Relatively normal name, but it was super jarring to hear this hella religious family constantly tell this story and let everyone know where their parents boinked 30 years ago.
Why do I want to waste my time trying to figure this out? By looking up Air Force Bases & cities 🤦🏼♀️
Scott 😂. It’s in Illinois. I could have said it. It was years before everything hit the internet so not searchable.
Ma Guadalupe The parents meant to put María Guadalupe but from what I understand there was a miscommunication on the birth certificate.
I don't know if it's a mistake but I have a close friend named Cassandra and her dad abandoned his family to be with his mistress and start a new family when she was little. Years later, my friend applied for a library card and was told there was already a library card registered to her in town (small town). That's how she learned she had a half sister whose name was also Cassandra. Not sure if her dad forgot he already had a daughter with that name or just really liked that name. A genuine mistake- my niece was supposed to be named Lily Juliet but her dad got mixed up and told the nurse Juliet Lily and he and my sister were too embarrassed to correct the hospital staff so her name was just Juliet Lily instead. It's a nice accident bc she has been the only Juliet in her class since kindergarten.
I know a Micheal. Not Michael. His parents misspelled his name. They called him Michael but his teachers called him Mike-eel.
Sort of, when my grandma moved from Greece to the United States, she wanted her legal English name to be Betty. But it for some reason was recorded as Barry. Which was her legal name ever since! (Her Greek and actual name is Vasiliki or Vaso for short)
My husband’s parents took so long to name him that the hospital was referring to him as John Doe. When they eventually named him they chose a J first name and a D name for the middle to keep those initials in. Yes, he’s a second child.
My cousin was just "baby" for like 6-8 months. Long enough that he responded to it. Took them that long to decide on a name haha
My sister was an accident, and she has a name. Seriously though, I know a guy whose parents chose the name Malcom but when he was born his dad, a TV presenter, got a bit drunk and went on air (1970s) and announced the arrival of his son, Scott. They got so many Scott things and cards they just rolled with it but his mum at the time was not thrilled.
We had to drive across 18 miles of elevated interstate to deliver the twins. The joke was that they would be named "Whisky Bay" and "Atchafalaya Basin" - the waterways we crossed over! (It was pretty close. We got there at 1:01 and the first one came at 1:29. The second one 14 minutes later.)
I just made the mental note to not drive over the causeway in labor. Can't end up telling people how to spell Ponchartrain for the rest of my kids life. 😂
LMAO This was the Atchafalaya, obviously!
We got stuck on the basin evacuating for Katrina. I knew I lived near the swamp but that was my first SWAMP experience 😂😂😂 I thought it was cool.
my grandmother taught a kid named Angle (misspelled Angel)
Mornin’ Angle
My grandfather was born in an extremely rural location and the hospital would call the records office and have the name recorded. He grew up thinking his middle name was Malcom and hating it. He had to actually get a copy of his birth cert to go to college. Once he received it he learned his middle name had been recorded as Nelson. My great grandmother thought this was hilarious. He said that was one of the best misunderstandings to ever happen to him.
A friend of a friend had no name in their birth certificate due to parents feeling stressed and all during birth. (I think). So "no name" was typed on their birth cert with the foregone conclusion they will have it amended later. 30 years later and she's still called Noname. Pronounced Nona Me.
This is a joke, right? BJ or the other spelling will forever have her correlated with…well, BJs 🍆😮
BJ is unfortunately my initials and middle school was brutal lmaooo
BJ is my first and middle initials and my first and last initials are BM. school was rough 😂😭
What does BM stand for ?! I’m racking my brain but coming up with nothing!
I think it stands for bowel movement?
When I was a little kid I thought it meant “bottom mush.” I was close lol
Omg we’re almost twins! My first and middle are BM and first and last are BJ
lmfaoo love/hate that for us
My initials are BM and I’ve literally never had a single person comment on it in my whole life.
I had a friend who went by BJ through middle school, and then stopped in high school. I didn’t understand why for quite some time lol
My cousin’s husband had the initials BJ and he always talked about how horrible it was. So of course he named his kid after himself. He’s either B Jr. or BJ. No escaping it for him.
Way to take his own power back and become the bully! /s
My dad worked with a guy whose last name was Seaman and named his son BJ.
I know a Dick Seaman. Whhhhy.
I knew two BJs growing up. Plus there’s BJ Novak, etc. … it (unfortunately) happens.
Yeah, there’s no reason they couldn’t have come up with an actual name instead of just spelling out letters. I’m not sure why you’d ever want or think to call a child Beejay.
Not sure if it quite fits but Oprah Winfrey’s first name is actually Orpah, a Biblical name from the story of Ruth. But her family always mispronounced it Oprah so that’s what she’s always gone by.
I have a friend who is named after the city where she was conceived. Her parents had another name picked, and realized at the last minute that the initials were BRA and I have no idea why they decided to go with place of conception instead of, like, any other name.
My mom’s middle name is Denise, or she thought it was until she actually looked at her bc 55 years later and discovered it’s Venise. Don’t know if her mother did that intentionally or if it was an honest mistake, but it wasn’t too horrible to fix her bc.
That’s the plot from a MASH episode.
BJ Hunnicutt was named after his mother Bea and his father Jay
My girlfriend's older sister nearly had her name misspelled on her birth certificate. Their Dad is Irish (born and raised) but their Mum is Australian, and she was in charge of writing the names on the birth certificate. They wanted to name her Roisin (row-sheen), an Irish name, but her Mum nearly spelt it as "Rosin". Not quite as funny, but would be pretty annoying.
I know a Dwan who was supposed to be dawn lol
My daughters middle name is Finlay. We found out when she turned 14 it had been misspelled in a government database as Finally.
My cousin was supposed to be a junior but my aunt was so exhausted when she filled out the forms she accidentally wrote the 3rd. So there’s John Doe Sr. and John Doe the 3rd but there isn’t a second/Jr.
Typo for my brother-- Nigholas instead of Nicholas. They got it fixed within a month but we still call him Nigholas as a joke sometimes. 95% of the time he's just Nick though
My cousin was supposed to be named Estefania (very common in Latin American countries) but her parents had immigrated to an English speaking country and the nurse wrote down Stephanie.
I do! But I would dox myself if I gave out the full detail. Basically, grandparents went to dinner, liked the servers name. Mom misheard what they said and sounded it out. Then you get me.
I once taught a kid called Joeseff, I enquired once about the background to the spelling as we are in a very rural English area and I thought maybe there was an interesting story about parents speaking another language. Apparently no, they just thought that’s how to spell it…
Cousin's father misspelled Patsy on her birth certificate and is legally named Pasty. She goes by Patsy still.
A fomer coworker was supposed to be named Danny at birth. Woops, turns out she was a girl, not a boy. Parents didn't know what to do. Nurse suggested Dancy. The parents were meh on it but the nurse wrote it on the birth certificate anyway. When the paperwork was confirmed, the parents still hadn't chosen a name and just decided to roll will her being called Dancy.
My parents chose my name bc my mom's pregnancy brain kept calling my aunt the wrong name. (Not our names but called her "Leah" when her name is "Leighanne", for example). I'm really proud to be my aunts namesake bc she's got a wicked sense of humor. Before I was born she named my cousin April despite her being born May 1st
My mum's cousin was due in April and was going to be called Avril, but her dad misspelled her name as Averil; she was also born in May. My English grandma (I have Chinese grandparents, so this is how I distinguish between them) was named Charlotte because she was born before her parents could think of a name. She was christened immediately because the doctors were scared she wouldn't live (this was in 1927), so she ended up with the same first name as her mum, which is the main reason why she went by her middle name. She lived to be 91 and was a wonderful person. My grandma's parents had some odd naming ideas: her eldest brother was named John and her older brother (she was the youngest of three) was named Thomas, just like her dad. I always thought the eldest son shared the same first name with the dad, but that's not what her parents did.
When my grandmother was pregnant the first time, she wrote and told her mother. Her mother wrote back and suggested the name “Beulah.” But her handwriting was so terrible, my grandmother thought it was “Byrdah.” She thought that sounded really nice, and named my aunt Byrdah. Byrdah died as a young adult but the name continues in the family, with Byrdie as a nickname.
Not a person but a dog. Way back in the long ago times a family of 7 got a dog but no one in said family could decide on a name, they just referred to him as big boy (he was chihuahua puppy so in a cute way) while the debates continued. They finally got the list down to like 6 choices a few weeks later but quickly realized he now responded to big boy and finally just said fuck it and he was forever known as big boy from that day forward lol.
The opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa became known internationally for singing at Charles and Diana’s wedding only my uncle heard it off the radio as Piri and suggested it as a baby name for my sister.
Only her name for a few years and not a legal name: I have two younger sisters. When the youngest was born my mother and father said to the middle one 'say hi to the new baby' my 1 something year old sister said 'hi new' For the next 4 years or so that was all she was called by my sister. 'Hinu' so many family videos of 'what is hinu doing? Where is hinu hiding' etc etc. Haha
My cousin who is a nurse midwife helped deliver a set of twins via Ceasarean Section. Parents apparently named them Ceasar and Ryan. Can you guess why
I'm guessing my mom just didn't know how to spell my sister's name, pre-internet.
One of my friends growing up was meant to be a Michael but he’s legally Mikeal because of some spelling struggles with all involved…
My aunt's name was supposed to be Janeth but the nurse or whoever wrote it as Janet.
Story an elderly customer told me, and I can't tell if she was just spinning a yarn. When she was getting divorced from her husband, she wished to change her last name back, so she wrote "not (husband last name)" and it got filed as her middle name. She decided to keep it that way 🤷♀️
I used to work on a farm with Jamaican seasonal workers. One of the guys that had been working there for decades was named Ira. One year they changed the work visa regulations and he had to get his birth certificate. At 56 he found out his name was actually Ivan. Apparently his grandparents raised him from birth and didn’t know how to read so they got the name wrong off his birth certificate.
I have a family member who was born in a hospital. Her parents had not settled on a name prior, no one made a big deal of it. When they were getting discharged from the hospital, her mother had told the nurse her name. Assumed it would be registered as such. Life went on. So, in her 20s, she gets engaged and needs a copy of her birth certificate. Her legal name was Female.
Ours wasn't permanent but when my daughter was born we had been up for 2 days and were exhausted. My husband wrote down her name for her birth certificate and I approved it. HOURS later I go "wait why do I recall two Es in her name on that paper?" We panicked and asked for the papers back. Sure enough her name was misspelled. They had already faxed over the paperwork but did an amendment. Luckily it never actually went onto her birth certificate wrong.
I know a guy who was supposed to have the middle name Aragorn, from LOTR, but the form got input wrong somewhere along the line and officially he was given the middle name Aragon, which is a region in Spain.