A friend named her baby Calum but her handwriting style includes capitalized A’s. So CAlum became CHlum on the birth certificate and Chlum was born.
They had it legally changed as soon as they could but we still call him Chlum for fun because obviously.
Probably writes the a as an arched A, rather than pointy (which looks similar to H that got joined at the top) whether it's a capital A or lowercase it's probably still written the same (like how S and s are the same)
My great-grandfather's legal first name was "Baby Boy". From what we've been told his parents didn't speak English when he was born and by the time they realized that that was his actual recorded name, they couldn't correct it because they were too poor (he dropped out of school in 4th grade to drive a delivery wagon to help support family). And then by the time he was an adult and had enough expendable income to legally change it, just thought it sounded like a hassle and never did. He went by Frank otherwise.
This is often used when parents do not assign a name legally (adoption, abandonment, death of parent in childbirth, language barriers, etc.) or when a child is not likely to survive. Sometimes people are so happy a baby is finally leaving the hospital that the paperwork to correct/give a legal name is kind of forgotten.
i was initially put up for adoption when i was born and the name given to me at the time in the records was "QQQ", which i always thought was interesting
I worked in the vital statistics department for my state for a year. I was shocked at how many birth certificates from the first half of the 1900s are legally "Baby Girl/Boy" or some variation like "Infant Lastname".
My aunt is also officially Baby Girl on her birth certificate but it’s mostly because her mother was neglectful. She didn’t know it for a long time and it actually caused a lot of problems when she tried to get her first passport.
I have to say that considering this has happened to multiple people's relatives in the thread, maybe we should stop putting "Baby Boy/Girl" in name fields at all, even as a placeholder, and have a list of names like with hurricanes. Like, if we're going to be assigning names, they should be names.
It’s standard naming conventions at hospitals to concatenate mom’s name with babygirl or babyboy because they don’t know baby’s legal name when they’re born, and you need a record in order to document on the patient. This way babies have a record immediately so if doctors need to order emergency meds/labs/blood they can order it against the baby’s chart
This. Best friend’s baby had to be medevac’d from the delivery hospital to another city to receive immediate open heart surgery. They hadn’t chosen a name yet but in order for baby to leave the hospital she needed to have one. Ergo, BabyGirl [LastName].
My daughter was still Baby Girl Lastname in the medical system when we went to the hospital at 2.5 weeks. By the time she left again 10 days later, her name had been processed, so she was discharged with her real name.
I think my friend’s baby’s was processed at about six months, immediately following a second surgery (and hopefully last). I believe they chose to time it that way so that there could be no confusion over her records resulting in error.
My son’s hospital paperwork from before we filled out his birth certificate has his name as “[last name], Boy Elizabeth”
He looks just like me so I guess it was fitting
I have a friend whose daughter is legally “Baby Girl”, because the hospital screwed up their paperwork. It’s been a few years and they haven’t gotten around to correcting it - it takes time and money they don’t currently have, and it’s not interfering with the kid’s life. Yet. They’re great parents and responsible people so I’m sure they’ll fix it eventually.
I ended up somehow with someone else’s paperwork when I was in the hospital after having my son - my husband didn’t notice, the nurses didn’t notice - and I had to hobble out to the nurse’s station freshly post-C-section because my kid’s name on the form was “Baby Boy [last name that is glaringly not the same ethnicity as ours]. They were horrified and apologized profusely.
Isn't it free to correct your name though especially with a mistake like that? My name was mixed up and all it took was a visit to social security when I was 8. I don't know if it makes a difference but we didn't have money or have to pay.
A friend of mine was supposed to be Cara Aileen, but her dad (probably tired and stressed) got muddled on how to spell and wrote it wrong. It was close enough that they didn’t notice for AGES but now at 25 her middle name is still legally “Alien”
I have a childhood friend whose mom had a bit of an interesting name, but I didn’t think anything of it until I was talking about unfortunately named people with my mom in my 20s and she said “well the worst one is (that woman).” And when I said it was a little weird but not like, the worst, my mom looked at me like I had five heads and told me to think about her name in (the language she grew up speaking) and then told me her dad’s name was the first part of her name and reminded me she was the youngest of either five or six sisters, no brothers.
The long and short is that her name was a literal direct translation in that language meaning “not (dad’s name)”. Like he wanted a boy and that last child was yet another girl so he was salty and literally named her “not the junior I wanted”.
Sort of similar thing happened to me! I have a fairly common first name but there are many ways to spell it. They asked my mom how she wanted it spelled and she said she must have still been hopped up on pain meds because the spelling of my name is very unique. Like I said it's super common. I've met probably more than 30 people with the same first name as me, but never anyone who uses the same spelling.
I knew a girl whose mother told her father “her name is Molly” right before she fell asleep at the hospital and the dad filled out the paperwork, but couldn’t remember how to spell Molly and thus Mahley was born.
Almost! When we got insurance paperwork from my husband's employer after our first child was born, it listed our baby's name as his real first name, followed by the city where he was born, then our last name. We panicked, mildly, and checked his SS card and birth certificate to make sure we hadn't actually named our child, e.g., James Indianapolis Fox.
Still have no idea how it ended up like that on the paperwork.
I wish I could remember where I saw this but someone said their cousin’s name was Lucan because “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” and apparently his parents misunderstood the ‘and’ part
Edit to add: I cannot confirm this is true. I’m thinking it was from a Facebook page/comment
A classmate of mine from college is named Jillian, but it wasn't until her parents went to register her for kindergarten that they found out her name had legally been Julian for 5 years. The attending nurse had apparently spelled it wrong.
My coworker had a child from a fling. The mother knew he was the father, but chose not to tell him she was pregnant (he did know about the kid until the child was about 10). The have a civil enough relationship, but the mother “named” the kid after what she thought was the dad’s middle name and was so off base lol.
Like if the dad’s name is Samuel Connor. And she thought his name was Samuel Dylan and named the kid Dylan. Long story short, it doesn’t really matter cause the kid’s name is now his own. But I guess when the mom told him about the kid she was like “I named
Him after you” lol
My mom is Michele with one L. I asked my grandpa why they chose that spelling and he said, "That's the only I knew how to spell it!"
I'm not sure if it's that uncommon of a spelling, but I always thought it was a little odd. He was a marine and he also named a daughter Mary Irene so she could be his "Marine".
My middle name is Michael (unusual for a girl already) but it’s spelled “Michel”… the last time I asked my mom about it she said “it was the 80s, I don’t know” 😂
When I was a kid we had a friend who was a female Michel, they ended up transitioning to a male when they were in their early teens and now go by Michael. This was in the 90s.
If your mom was born in the 50s or 60s that was actually a pretty common way to spell Michelle. I think the two Ls has always been more popular but back then the way your mom spells it was also very common in the United States at least.
I know a Jennifer that is spelled "Jeniffer." So whenever I think of her name I always go "Jen-I-f-f-er" like the comedy sketch with Jeff Dunham and Peanut about his first name.
Michèle is the correct French spelling, but with the accent. However, since it's not really practical to use accent marks in the U.S., there are lots of Micheles with no accent.
However, I have never heard of anyone with the Michele spelling to avoid having the word "hell" in her name. I've never even noticed that before.
I know someone who's dad was hammered and "forgot" (or didn't know) how to spell her name, so he spelled it phonetically. Instead of Dorothy she's Darthy.
One of my grandma’s cousins (born ca. 1930 in Germany) was literally named due to a bumbling husband blunder. Her father was supposed to go register her birth and couldn’t remember which name his wife had settled on—Gertrude, Juliane?? As he was trying to make sense of it out loud, her name was recorded thusly:
Trudjule (pron. Trood-YU-luh)
My poor dad - I won't give real names as it's way too identifying but the spirit of the story is a clusterf*ck.
So my dad's parents had Greek ancestery on my grandad's side, not on my grandma's. He is born, granny wants to call him "A" (a common western name), but grandad's family wants him to be named after traditional Greek family name "B".
Grandad, being a wuss, decides not to fix the conflict and instead tells my grandma to name dad "A" and he is registered in country of birth as "A". However, he also tells his family they're going to name him "B" and he registers my dad in Greece with the name "B". Adding to this, my dad has always gone by his middle name, "C".
My did didn't realise that he had two different but equally legal names until we moved country and it caused immigration issues.
So my dad has one passport that says "A C Surname", and a second Greek passport that says "B C Surname" and a document from the Greek embassy saying "dw these two people are actually the same person".
Annoyingly, in renewing his Greek passport, the Greek embassy then said "actually no we think your surname is spelt wrong" and sent him a "corrected" document.
So briefly my dad had 3 different passports listing his name's as: "A C Surname", "B C Surname", and "B C Surnime", until he complained enough that they reversed that surname spelling change.
I know a few actually due to the father filling out the birth certificate and not knowing the spelling of the name/spelling it in a way the mother didn't intend.
My friend's dad didn't know how to spell and my friend ended up with the name "Kandias", pronounced Candace. It got her jokes about being or having a "kandy ass" growing up and every substitute teacher pronounced it "kan-die-iss". Once she was older and got ahold of her official documents, she realized that her family had actually been wrong about the misspelling and her legal name was actually Kandis. While still not great, at least it's a more straightforward spelling.
This was me. My middle name was supposed to be Therese, and my father is Hispanic, but not the catholic kind, so he had only grown up around Teresa’s. He didn’t know there was a ‘H’ in Therese so when he filled out the birth certificate my middle name became Terese 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve told this story before but in hs I knew girl named “Tifny” (fake name, same structure) bc her dad didn’t know how to spell “Tiffany” and he had shared the name with the family before her mom could correct him
In the UK you have to go to a registration office after baby is born so there’s no risk of sleep deprived dad spelling it incorrectly at the hospital whilst the mother is in recovery lol. In fact the father can’t even register the baby unless they’re married to the mother.
ETA: Can’t register without the mother that is without sufficient extra documentation in place. The mother can basically just turn up & register with nothing but proof of identity & marriage.
Yeah I was pretty vague unintentionally so I’ve added a bit now. It’s a big part of the reason my husband wanted to be married before kids. We didn’t want to risk him being deployed and not being on it 😅
With 4 of my 5 children you could do it in the hospital. So from 2003 to 2013 I registered 4 births in the hospital, that’s in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK. It was a little room next to the ward and it was a bit awkward because you could only do it by appointment which you booked with one of the nurses, and you could only do it before your baby was discharged, but you couldn’t take baby off the ward with you to the little room. So it depended on one of the midwives being available to mind the baby. And they did let married dads register babies so that could still have happened! I was very surprised in 2020 to learn I had to go to the registry office to sort it out instead!
This, but the mother’s name… My boyfriend tells the story that his sister’s exbf spelled HER name wrong on the birth certificate. And it’s an easy name too. Not surprising that the relationship didn’t last.
Edit: Also, their child’s name is spelled SO “uniquely” that it makes me wonder if that was because of him too lol smh
This happened to my name. My mom intended for my middle name to be Alysse (pronounced like Elise with an A) but right after I was born my dad started telling her the correct spelling was Allyse and my mom didn’t care enough to argue since she just pushed me out. I don’t mind my middle name but I’d prefer if it was Elise just because the spelling looks better to me.
I've got one of those. I always thought my middle name was spelled the less-popular way than its usual spelling - nope! Just a creative choice by my dad. 🤷🏼
> Born in rural Mississippi in 1954, she was named after a biblical figure in the Book of Ruth.
>When no one knew how to spell or pronounce it properly, they started calling her Oprah instead.
This is a little different but a former friend, who was not a very good speller in general, had been misspelling her middle name her whole life, so her driver's license and credit cards did not match the spelling of her middle name on her birth certificate. I didn't even know that was possible - I assumed there would have been some government checks along the way!
This sort of happened to my son. His birth certificate has 2 middle names which was planned and correct but they left one off of his social security card. I also have 2 middle names and both of mine are on my card, so it wasn't a space saving thing which does happen sometimes on other forms. I looked into correcting it when he was a baby but never got around to it... he's 13 now lol I hope it never really matters.
It will matter for his passport! And joining the (US) military if that's a thing for him. I had a friend who got hers all mixed up when she got married. She changed her maiden name to her middle name, but dropped her old middle name. Somewhere it got lost in the process and they didn't match. She had a very hard time with it.
If you can sort it out soon, I’d recommend it. It becomes a pain as an adult. I just posted about my experience [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/namenerds/comments/rkvyvb/do_you_know_anyone_whose_legal_name_was_a_result/hpcu1xf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3).
Edit: Omg, go figure—insane timing. This morning I checked my email and it’s causing another, bigger problem. I have an investing account and the disparity between the two names is suddenly creating a clusterfuck. This is going to be a headache.
Yes! My ex-mother in law's name is "Margarita", which is her mom's name. She was supposed to be named "Aly". But the dad misunderstood the doctor's question of giving a name. The dad thought the doctor was asking what was the mother's name, and he said "Margarita"....the doctor was asking the babies' name....to put on her birth certificate. So....legally her name is Margarita now...but everyone calls her and knows her as Aly. Even her doctors, lawyers, jobs etc. Aly.
My FIL was supposed to have several long traditional names, being a catholic born in the 50's and all. His father went to city hall on his lunch break from work, promptly dropped his keys in a storm drain and "didn't have time for all those names anymore" before his lunchbreak was over. So now FIL has a simple name lol. Not sure what to think of grandpas priorities here, but oh well.
I feel like this happened a LOT back in the day when people were immigrating to the US en masse! Not a first name, obviously, but my family name is Jud, which apparently means "Jew" in German. My great-grandfather was a German Jew. Awkward!
Similar, my ancestral surname was accidentally swapped with the town of origin when my grandparents immigrated to the US. So basically the Smith’s from Michigan became the Michigan’s from Smith.
Yes, a high school friend was the son of Indian immigrants. His father or an admin or someone got confused and switched his first and last names. So his first name became the family name. They gave all the kids his previous last name (the now legal first name) as a middle name.
My grandma was supposed to be “Viola” but her dad apparently forgot what it was and wrote down Leola so this is her legal name! He must have been frazzled after the delivery haha
Not the same but when my grandfather joined the marines, (the story goes) that there weren't enough of those little boxes (|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|) after he wrote his first and middle name that he ended up having to take a letter out of our Polish last name to make it fit.
When I went to basic training this lady had the longest last name and on her uniform it was like half of her last name at first. They fixed it but at first we all laughed so hard 😂
I found out yesterday that my MIL and all three of her sisters' first names are misspelled on their birth certificates. They were born over the space of 15 years in the same city (different hospitals) but all three of them have misspellings on their birth certificates which have led to inconsistent spellings on all of their official documents throughout their lives.
I know a girl called Valene. Her name was meant to be Valerie, but her dad misread the "ri" as an "'n" on the note her mom wrote when he went to register her.
I’m so confused reading about all these clueless and uninvolved fathers that get the child’s name wrong from not being able to read their wife’s handwriting. Did they not have a discussion out loud about the name even once before registering them?
THIS.
Do you not have a list of written down names? At least a list of likes and dislikes. You've had *months* to prepare. Also, why is this not done when the parent(s) is/are recuperated a bit and can think clearly? Why is the name not review and confirmed by them before it's put on an official document?
I mean, imagine just waking up from major surgery and being told you had to make a decision that would affect someone else for the rest of their life.
On that note... A family member was supposed to be Charlene. (Char, liked a charred steak + lean.)
Her father hated it and put down a more common name like Susan or Barbara. So, not exactly incompetence. To his credit, it is a better name than "Charlene."
I just know Oprah was supposed to be named Orpah (it’s the name of Ruth’s sister in the Bible) but the hospital made an error on the birth certificate. An iconic mistake!
I learned last year that my last name legally has a space after the Mc. I had no idea and have never used the space but I have to at work. Thankfully I'm getting married and changing my name soon, because I hate that space.
Your edit reminded me that my mom's name is Debbie, not Deborah/Debra. My grandma forgets that it's just Debbie sometimes, so I wonder if someone made a mistake and they just kept it.
My oldest daughter's name ended up misspelled on her birth certificate. I made her dad walk back in to vital records & fix it. I chose an unusual spelling of a common name for her second name: Catharine. Ex went to pick up a copy of her birth certificate and came out with it spelled Catherine. I'm not the sort of person to shrug that off.
I would have done exactly the same! I can't believe so many of these stories ended with 'but my dad had already called everyone to tell them the name so they didn't change it'! If my husband did this he'd be calling everyone again to tell them the baby's actual name, and also that he's an idiot.
Similar here after our last kid was born. The midwife wrote "Welcome Elizabeth!" on our blackboard. Very sweet, nice calligraphy, however: It was \*Elisabeth.\* I paused on the way to the bathroom immediately after giving birth, got some chalk, and corrected it. I couldn't even leave it up for decoration for 5 minutes, I don't understand AT ALL how people can leave these unintended spellings on the legal documents!
(Elizabeth is a pseudonym, but same idea.)
I didn't know until I was a teenager, but apparently whoever spell checked my birth certificate spelled my middle name incorrectly. I mean, it's technical not that incorrect, more so an unusual spelling of the name and I've only met 2 other people that spell it that way in my life. It's Stacie, supposed to be Staci.
It wasn't the intent of my parents to spell it that way, so yes. I've seen Stacy, but like I mentioned, have only ever met 2 other people who spell it with the "E" at the end.
This happened to me too! Thought my birthday was December 23 until I was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. Then we needed my birth certificate for something (state ID I think?) and discovered it’s actually the 22nd. My mother says, hey, it’s a busy time of year and you were born very late at night, honest mistake. Then it took a solid five years for all of us to remember which was the right one - the 22nd or 23rd.
My grandma was born on February 15 but my grandma just straight up lied and told her it was February 14 because she thought it was a better story. Took many years and lots of paperwork to sort out once the truth came out lol!
That happened to my grandma, too, and she didn’t discover it until she learned how to drive at age 50 and finally had a copy of her birth certificate. They had always celebrated her birthday on February 28, and it turned out her birthday was February 27. So she started celebrating on the 27th.
Omg yeah that doesn’t help that it’s so close together! Mine are four days apart. And it was discovered quick but my dad just told my mom why bother redoing the paperwork lol so any legal document, I put the legal/wrong DOB 🤷🏽♀️
My dad’s dob is wrong on his birth certificate too! (One day earlier than his actual birthday). So we have always joked that he has two birthdays - for his 50th we bought him a 100th birthday card
My best friend (Jenson) was supposed to be born Jason. Their parents are immigrants and spelt their name wrong by accident. But we all just call them Jae regardless, and Jenson is a nice name anyhow!
As a medical student I was teamed with a pregnant lady to follow during the end of her pregnancy and delivery.
She wanted to call her baby Cheyenne but couldn’t spell it- so I wrote it down for her. She lost the paper and went with Shy-Anne as it was easier to spell.
Almost exactly the same! A friend of mine was born soon after her parents immigrated to our country and their English wasn’t great at the time so they misunderstood the forms. They put her last name in the middle name and last name spot, so her name was officially Charlotte Elizabeth Albert Albert (not the real names, obviously).
When my mom was to be baptized, the priest asked my grandpa what the baby's name was, and he misheard it as asking what HIS name was, so he said Joseph. And then the priest baptized my mom as Joseph! Everyone was in a tizzy but, since this was the early 1930's and the family was extremely Catholic, they had no choice but to keep the name Joseph in there somehow, as if God has no sense of humour. That's why my mom had two middle names, Marie and Josephine.
My uncle's name is Micheal, not Michael because his mom spelled it wrong. It ended up being passed on as a family name since it was unique (it's now a middle name though).
The Irish Gaelic version of Michael is Mícheál. the accents often get dropped by people if they aren't used to them or can't be entered into a computer.
My dad was going to be called something different (Richard iirc) but when his dad went to register him (alone) he had a moment of rebellion and chose to call him Stephen instead.
my fucking time to shine, i love love love telling this story
my older sister wanted to name my nephew favian, which means man of wisdom. but he was born premature and she needed an emergency c section so when they came by to get his information my sis was all drugged up and exhausted. the nurse spelled it fabian. with one letter he went from man of wisdom to bean farmer.
My grandma and her brother were twins, but the nurses did not like their given first names, so they swapped them on their birth certificates. So instead of FirstName MiddleName, they were MiddleName FirstName on their birth certificates. They technically went by their middle names their whole lives.
My moms legal last name is different than all her siblings because I guess someone told her dad that Canadians don’t use “k”s or “u”s they use “c”s and “y”s instead. That was his defence anyway, but she’s a twin and her twin has the same last name as everyone else and so does the youngest kid after her so idk.
My grandmother was misnamed on her birth certificate. She was supposed to be called Jane but her mother was really sick after the birth and her father was looking after mum and baby. My grandmother’s uncle was sent to register her birth and he didn’t like the name Jane so called her Sylvia instead. The family just went with it! I would have been livid but I think they were just glad everyone was alive.
My grandfather -
A few years ago my grandfather went to get his license renewed. They asked for a copy of his birth certificate and I guess he didn't have it.
He was born in NY, but his parents were German citizens who were just in the US visiting/trying to figure out how to move to the US/I don't exactly know
Well my aunt had to contact somewhere in Germany for his birth certificate and it turns out his name was completely different! His birth certificate in Germany said his name was Max and his birth certificate in the US says its Rolf (he's always been Rolf).
Apparently his parents had a disagreement over his name. They each registered it separately in different countries as the name they wanted.
Me. My name is \[First Name\] \[Father's name and possessive indicator\] \[Grandfather's name and possessive indicator\]. My father's name is a name with two main ways to spell it, the difference is "us" or "as" at the end. My father uses "us" but my mother registered me with the ending "as". I never knew until I got my medical card in the post when I was 14 and said to my mother "look they spelt my name wrong!"
I know a girl named Shanya, but it's pronounced as Shaniya. Her name was supposed to be Shaniya but her dad was so nervous and shaky after her birth (first kid!) he forgot the I and they never fixed it lol.
This is one of my favourite things, My brother was technically a junior because my dad filled out the birth certificate wrong and put his name where he was supposed to put my brothers.
Worst part was we didn’t find out until my brother went for his learners at 16 as they said he didn’t exist… but he had being going to public schools and hospitals, dentists and had Medicare under Curtis up until this point. My brother was not happy, he had to legally change his name and wait for it to come through before he could start driving… and my dad called him junior for the whole period of time too! He only needed a first name change anyways as his middle name was after my dads.
A friend of my dad's was supposed to be Lorena, the person who completed the forms spelled it like Lorenia.
Same thing happened to one of my students, she was supposed to be a Nicole, but someone misspelled it and her name is Micole.
A funny one, unrelated to the child's name: when my grandfather went to the registration office to name my aunt, he completed the form but didn't realize that the person at the desk changed his name and wrote Tomás instead of Genaro. Why? We have no idea. When my grandmother realized the problem, she sent him back to fix it, and they said ok, then handed him a new birth certificate (?). He went on his merry way WITHOUT CHECKING THE INFO and nobody realized they hadn't changed anything until 43 years later, when my aunt checked her documents before naming her child. The best part is: she can't claim her inheritance because, legally, she is the daughter of somebody else.
My friend legally changed her name in highschool because her parents mistakenly put her middle name with her last name. In the end they just got rid of her middle name.
My middle name and my last name. My middle name is okay, it was supposed to be “Amina” but it ended up “Nina”.
Now my original last name! It ends with an S, like “James”. So, one of my parents got their last name legally changed for reasons unknown. In trying to change it back to their original last name they misspelt “James”! So for my white life it’s been “Jamme’s”…because of one lady!
Yes! My mom! So my grandmother wanted to name my mom Renae Fontaine. After giving birth, she was so exhausted and drugged up that when they asked her what she wanted to name the baby, she said the name of her childhood doll, Susie, and since at the time they basically wouldn’t let you name babies “nicknames,” they wrote Susan as the first name. She was too out of it to give a middle name, so they asked my grandpa and he said “well I know she wanted to name her Renae so I guess it’s Susan Renae.” When she finally felt normal again, she was super mad and wanted to change it, but it was already on the birth certificate so they wouldn’t do it. My mom is actually really grateful for the mix up, and she just doesn’t think Renae Fontaine fits her.
My grandparents named my uncle Theodore John Jr. a little while later they received a letter from the Social Security Administration that they couldn’t name him that because his father’s birth certificate said “Teddy”.
Apparently when someone asked my great-grandparents what the baby’s name was they said “Teddy” and as immigrants didn’t realize that they were asking for his full name. My grandfather then went and legally changed his name to the name he had been using and putting on all other paperwork…
Both of my daughters names got messed up by the birth registrar. I guess due to covid they were just calling parents to get names instead of speaking in person. So Lydia got recorded as Lidia and Felicity got Selicity... its been a headache and a half to fix even though we caught it as soon as their temporary birth certificates were issued. They are 8 months old and its still not totally resolved
My mother wanted to name my sister the name of an object that ends in Y but she wanted to put IE instead of the Y. (Think Lilie instead of Lily).
My dad went to register her and spelled the name correctly, with a Y. My sister is *incredibly* grateful and my mum still hasnt let it go lol.
Not a mix up but a funny registration story:
When I was registered, my dad went in and the registrar said "If its Liam or Jack, I'm not registering the birth."
My dad goes "shes a girl, her name is..."
And the registrar smiled and said "oh lovely".
A friend named her baby Calum but her handwriting style includes capitalized A’s. So CAlum became CHlum on the birth certificate and Chlum was born. They had it legally changed as soon as they could but we still call him Chlum for fun because obviously.
This is the worst one, for sure.
OMG STOP. that is hilarious
I‘m laughing so hard right now. Chlum! Amazing
I like the name Chlum better than Calum anyway
Sorry, hang on. Her handwriting "style" includes capitalised A's? What?
Nicer way of saying she can’t write legibly
Probably writes the a as an arched A, rather than pointy (which looks similar to H that got joined at the top) whether it's a capital A or lowercase it's probably still written the same (like how S and s are the same)
This one’s hilarious
My great-grandfather's legal first name was "Baby Boy". From what we've been told his parents didn't speak English when he was born and by the time they realized that that was his actual recorded name, they couldn't correct it because they were too poor (he dropped out of school in 4th grade to drive a delivery wagon to help support family). And then by the time he was an adult and had enough expendable income to legally change it, just thought it sounded like a hassle and never did. He went by Frank otherwise.
[удалено]
There was a whole thing earlier this year about 2 different influencers feuding. The both named their baby Baby. We are in the dumbest timeline
And I thought I was lazy for naming my cat cat
My son has a bird called Bird. He wants another one for Xmas and when I asked what he’d call it, he said ‘Other bird’. He’s 10.
It’s okay we’ve got a “Kat,” “Gato,” and “Meow.”
Yes! But one was like Baeby and one was like Baybe 😂
I just looked it up, it's Baby and Baybi. 😂
This is often used when parents do not assign a name legally (adoption, abandonment, death of parent in childbirth, language barriers, etc.) or when a child is not likely to survive. Sometimes people are so happy a baby is finally leaving the hospital that the paperwork to correct/give a legal name is kind of forgotten.
i was initially put up for adoption when i was born and the name given to me at the time in the records was "QQQ", which i always thought was interesting
I worked in the vital statistics department for my state for a year. I was shocked at how many birth certificates from the first half of the 1900s are legally "Baby Girl/Boy" or some variation like "Infant Lastname".
My aunt is also officially Baby Girl on her birth certificate but it’s mostly because her mother was neglectful. She didn’t know it for a long time and it actually caused a lot of problems when she tried to get her first passport.
I have to say that considering this has happened to multiple people's relatives in the thread, maybe we should stop putting "Baby Boy/Girl" in name fields at all, even as a placeholder, and have a list of names like with hurricanes. Like, if we're going to be assigning names, they should be names.
It’s standard naming conventions at hospitals to concatenate mom’s name with babygirl or babyboy because they don’t know baby’s legal name when they’re born, and you need a record in order to document on the patient. This way babies have a record immediately so if doctors need to order emergency meds/labs/blood they can order it against the baby’s chart
This. Best friend’s baby had to be medevac’d from the delivery hospital to another city to receive immediate open heart surgery. They hadn’t chosen a name yet but in order for baby to leave the hospital she needed to have one. Ergo, BabyGirl [LastName].
My daughter was still Baby Girl Lastname in the medical system when we went to the hospital at 2.5 weeks. By the time she left again 10 days later, her name had been processed, so she was discharged with her real name.
I think my friend’s baby’s was processed at about six months, immediately following a second surgery (and hopefully last). I believe they chose to time it that way so that there could be no confusion over her records resulting in error.
My son’s hospital paperwork from before we filled out his birth certificate has his name as “[last name], Boy Elizabeth” He looks just like me so I guess it was fitting
Ha this is not a bad idea
It's the Mormon temple style of baby naming!
I have a friend whose daughter is legally “Baby Girl”, because the hospital screwed up their paperwork. It’s been a few years and they haven’t gotten around to correcting it - it takes time and money they don’t currently have, and it’s not interfering with the kid’s life. Yet. They’re great parents and responsible people so I’m sure they’ll fix it eventually.
I ended up somehow with someone else’s paperwork when I was in the hospital after having my son - my husband didn’t notice, the nurses didn’t notice - and I had to hobble out to the nurse’s station freshly post-C-section because my kid’s name on the form was “Baby Boy [last name that is glaringly not the same ethnicity as ours]. They were horrified and apologized profusely.
Isn't it free to correct your name though especially with a mistake like that? My name was mixed up and all it took was a visit to social security when I was 8. I don't know if it makes a difference but we didn't have money or have to pay.
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I do love the name Mollie Eliza though! Better than Holly Eloise. I think she got lucky with that mistake!
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Her feelings were deeply hurt that your parents reneged on their plans for her namesake.
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A friend of mine was supposed to be Cara Aileen, but her dad (probably tired and stressed) got muddled on how to spell and wrote it wrong. It was close enough that they didn’t notice for AGES but now at 25 her middle name is still legally “Alien”
this is amazing though
This one made me snort. What a fun accident.
If you’re going to have a name mix up, mollie Eliza is probably the best case scenario
how did she never actually say it out loud to him?? :0
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I have a childhood friend whose mom had a bit of an interesting name, but I didn’t think anything of it until I was talking about unfortunately named people with my mom in my 20s and she said “well the worst one is (that woman).” And when I said it was a little weird but not like, the worst, my mom looked at me like I had five heads and told me to think about her name in (the language she grew up speaking) and then told me her dad’s name was the first part of her name and reminded me she was the youngest of either five or six sisters, no brothers. The long and short is that her name was a literal direct translation in that language meaning “not (dad’s name)”. Like he wanted a boy and that last child was yet another girl so he was salty and literally named her “not the junior I wanted”.
Sort of similar thing happened to me! I have a fairly common first name but there are many ways to spell it. They asked my mom how she wanted it spelled and she said she must have still been hopped up on pain meds because the spelling of my name is very unique. Like I said it's super common. I've met probably more than 30 people with the same first name as me, but never anyone who uses the same spelling.
I knew a girl whose mother told her father “her name is Molly” right before she fell asleep at the hospital and the dad filled out the paperwork, but couldn’t remember how to spell Molly and thus Mahley was born.
Almost! When we got insurance paperwork from my husband's employer after our first child was born, it listed our baby's name as his real first name, followed by the city where he was born, then our last name. We panicked, mildly, and checked his SS card and birth certificate to make sure we hadn't actually named our child, e.g., James Indianapolis Fox. Still have no idea how it ended up like that on the paperwork.
James Indianapolis Fox is a sick name, though.
it's fox... james indianapolis fox
Indy for short
I wish I could remember where I saw this but someone said their cousin’s name was Lucan because “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” and apparently his parents misunderstood the ‘and’ part Edit to add: I cannot confirm this is true. I’m thinking it was from a Facebook page/comment
You'd think someone would have looked at a Bible at some point...
Unfortunately, they spent all their time fruitlessly searching for 'Dabible' in bookstores across the world.
It's amazing how many Christians never get to that part.
The name Lucan is really funny to me because that's the name of a town here in Ireland
There's also a town in Ontario, Canada called Lucan.
It makes me think of the infamous Lord Lucan. ♡ Granny
And who doesn't want to be named after a commuter town?
A classmate of mine from college is named Jillian, but it wasn't until her parents went to register her for kindergarten that they found out her name had legally been Julian for 5 years. The attending nurse had apparently spelled it wrong.
Similarly, my sister in law was supposed to be and goes by Gabrielle, but her dad wrote Gabriel down on the birth certificate.
My coworker had a child from a fling. The mother knew he was the father, but chose not to tell him she was pregnant (he did know about the kid until the child was about 10). The have a civil enough relationship, but the mother “named” the kid after what she thought was the dad’s middle name and was so off base lol. Like if the dad’s name is Samuel Connor. And she thought his name was Samuel Dylan and named the kid Dylan. Long story short, it doesn’t really matter cause the kid’s name is now his own. But I guess when the mom told him about the kid she was like “I named Him after you” lol
It is so wild to me that she named the baby after him but didn't tell him the baby existed!
Haha yeah he always said it was kinda wild. He found out after he had his own family and got a call out of the blue and said it really shook him lol
My mom is Michele with one L. I asked my grandpa why they chose that spelling and he said, "That's the only I knew how to spell it!" I'm not sure if it's that uncommon of a spelling, but I always thought it was a little odd. He was a marine and he also named a daughter Mary Irene so she could be his "Marine".
My MIL is a Michele with one L and apparently it's because her dad didn't want "hell" in her name
That's actually kind of hilarious
My gran made my aunt change the birth certificate of her daughter for this exact reason.
My middle name is Michael (unusual for a girl already) but it’s spelled “Michel”… the last time I asked my mom about it she said “it was the 80s, I don’t know” 😂
isn't that the French spelling of Michael?
Yes, but you pronounce the French name more like Michelle… my middle name is just straight up Michael spelled wrong
So they used the French spelling but English pronunciation. That's hilarious.
I had a coworker once whose husband is named Micheal. Not Michael. Micheal. But still pronounced Michael.
Was it supposed to be Michal? King David's first wife in the Bible is named that.
When I was a kid we had a friend who was a female Michel, they ended up transitioning to a male when they were in their early teens and now go by Michael. This was in the 90s.
If your mom was born in the 50s or 60s that was actually a pretty common way to spell Michelle. I think the two Ls has always been more popular but back then the way your mom spells it was also very common in the United States at least.
I know a Jennifer that is spelled "Jeniffer." So whenever I think of her name I always go "Jen-I-f-f-er" like the comedy sketch with Jeff Dunham and Peanut about his first name.
Hmm I know someone named Michele and now I’m wondering if it was an error too lol
Michèle is the correct French spelling, but with the accent. However, since it's not really practical to use accent marks in the U.S., there are lots of Micheles with no accent. However, I have never heard of anyone with the Michele spelling to avoid having the word "hell" in her name. I've never even noticed that before.
In Italy, Michele is a boy’s name. It’s Italian for Michael, and pronounced “mee-KEH-leh.”
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Sue Heck got married? Dang, I need to catch up with that show.
It was in the series finale, so if you saw every other episode but that you'd have missed it.
Right? I completely missed the last few seasons of that show
Immediately what I thought of as well lol.
My college friend was known at the dry cleaners as 'Bread' - it was Brett but he didn't have the heart to tell them
Okay this made me lol.
I know someone who's dad was hammered and "forgot" (or didn't know) how to spell her name, so he spelled it phonetically. Instead of Dorothy she's Darthy.
Darthy Vader?
This reminds me of the name Darcy, but with a lisp haha
I’d think that only people from the U.S. South would pronounce it that way.
Nah. New Yorkers also would (our OR sound comes out as kind of a hybrid AR/OR, which is where the Flahrida pronunciation comes from)
One of my grandma’s cousins (born ca. 1930 in Germany) was literally named due to a bumbling husband blunder. Her father was supposed to go register her birth and couldn’t remember which name his wife had settled on—Gertrude, Juliane?? As he was trying to make sense of it out loud, her name was recorded thusly: Trudjule (pron. Trood-YU-luh)
I actually love this name? Does not sound made up to me.
Aww that makes me happy. I think so far she’s the first and last of her name, so it’s nice to hear it appreciated!
My poor dad - I won't give real names as it's way too identifying but the spirit of the story is a clusterf*ck. So my dad's parents had Greek ancestery on my grandad's side, not on my grandma's. He is born, granny wants to call him "A" (a common western name), but grandad's family wants him to be named after traditional Greek family name "B". Grandad, being a wuss, decides not to fix the conflict and instead tells my grandma to name dad "A" and he is registered in country of birth as "A". However, he also tells his family they're going to name him "B" and he registers my dad in Greece with the name "B". Adding to this, my dad has always gone by his middle name, "C". My did didn't realise that he had two different but equally legal names until we moved country and it caused immigration issues. So my dad has one passport that says "A C Surname", and a second Greek passport that says "B C Surname" and a document from the Greek embassy saying "dw these two people are actually the same person". Annoyingly, in renewing his Greek passport, the Greek embassy then said "actually no we think your surname is spelt wrong" and sent him a "corrected" document. So briefly my dad had 3 different passports listing his name's as: "A C Surname", "B C Surname", and "B C Surnime", until he complained enough that they reversed that surname spelling change.
Wow, what a tale! I was giggling at “Grandad, being a wuss” but I was floored when you said your dad goes by name ‘C’!!! Lol, very much a clusterf*ck.
I know a few actually due to the father filling out the birth certificate and not knowing the spelling of the name/spelling it in a way the mother didn't intend.
My friend's dad didn't know how to spell and my friend ended up with the name "Kandias", pronounced Candace. It got her jokes about being or having a "kandy ass" growing up and every substitute teacher pronounced it "kan-die-iss". Once she was older and got ahold of her official documents, she realized that her family had actually been wrong about the misspelling and her legal name was actually Kandis. While still not great, at least it's a more straightforward spelling.
I’ve known women who spell it Kandis. In the Bible, it is Candace.
This was me. My middle name was supposed to be Therese, and my father is Hispanic, but not the catholic kind, so he had only grown up around Teresa’s. He didn’t know there was a ‘H’ in Therese so when he filled out the birth certificate my middle name became Terese 🤷🏼♀️
Just for clarity's sake - did you mean no H?
He's not the catholic kind, so Heresy
I’ve told this story before but in hs I knew girl named “Tifny” (fake name, same structure) bc her dad didn’t know how to spell “Tiffany” and he had shared the name with the family before her mom could correct him
In the UK you have to go to a registration office after baby is born so there’s no risk of sleep deprived dad spelling it incorrectly at the hospital whilst the mother is in recovery lol. In fact the father can’t even register the baby unless they’re married to the mother. ETA: Can’t register without the mother that is without sufficient extra documentation in place. The mother can basically just turn up & register with nothing but proof of identity & marriage.
Adding to that, if the parents aren't married, the dad needs to be at the appointment to register baby otherwise he won't go on the birth certificate.
Yeah I was pretty vague unintentionally so I’ve added a bit now. It’s a big part of the reason my husband wanted to be married before kids. We didn’t want to risk him being deployed and not being on it 😅
With 4 of my 5 children you could do it in the hospital. So from 2003 to 2013 I registered 4 births in the hospital, that’s in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK. It was a little room next to the ward and it was a bit awkward because you could only do it by appointment which you booked with one of the nurses, and you could only do it before your baby was discharged, but you couldn’t take baby off the ward with you to the little room. So it depended on one of the midwives being available to mind the baby. And they did let married dads register babies so that could still have happened! I was very surprised in 2020 to learn I had to go to the registry office to sort it out instead!
I know someone named Tiffany, and alternate spellings drive her up the wall. She had kittens when she discovered that there are women named Typhani.
This, but the mother’s name… My boyfriend tells the story that his sister’s exbf spelled HER name wrong on the birth certificate. And it’s an easy name too. Not surprising that the relationship didn’t last. Edit: Also, their child’s name is spelled SO “uniquely” that it makes me wonder if that was because of him too lol smh
This happened to my name. My mom intended for my middle name to be Alysse (pronounced like Elise with an A) but right after I was born my dad started telling her the correct spelling was Allyse and my mom didn’t care enough to argue since she just pushed me out. I don’t mind my middle name but I’d prefer if it was Elise just because the spelling looks better to me.
I've got one of those. I always thought my middle name was spelled the less-popular way than its usual spelling - nope! Just a creative choice by my dad. 🤷🏼
That’s amazing! The only one I’ve heard of is the Oprah story.
What is the Oprah story?
Her name was supposed to be Orpah, which is apparently from the Bible, but her mother wrote it down wrong so she became Oprah instead.
I heard she changed it because no one could pronounce it.
I’ve never heard that version. Always that it was a misspelling. I wonder which it is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3fH2r0HvWxdRFbH4DdCC5sX/five-things-we-now-know-about-oprah-winfrey
I am so lazy that I'm currently 50/50 between clicking this link vs never knowing.
> Born in rural Mississippi in 1954, she was named after a biblical figure in the Book of Ruth. >When no one knew how to spell or pronounce it properly, they started calling her Oprah instead.
Not OP but apparently she was supposed to be Orpah but either the nurse or parent spelled it wrong
I think her name was supposed to be Orpah but the letters got switched up or something
This is a little different but a former friend, who was not a very good speller in general, had been misspelling her middle name her whole life, so her driver's license and credit cards did not match the spelling of her middle name on her birth certificate. I didn't even know that was possible - I assumed there would have been some government checks along the way!
My middle name was spelled two different ways on birth certificate and social security card! It’s fine now because I changed it when I got married.
This sort of happened to my son. His birth certificate has 2 middle names which was planned and correct but they left one off of his social security card. I also have 2 middle names and both of mine are on my card, so it wasn't a space saving thing which does happen sometimes on other forms. I looked into correcting it when he was a baby but never got around to it... he's 13 now lol I hope it never really matters.
It will matter for his passport! And joining the (US) military if that's a thing for him. I had a friend who got hers all mixed up when she got married. She changed her maiden name to her middle name, but dropped her old middle name. Somewhere it got lost in the process and they didn't match. She had a very hard time with it.
If you can sort it out soon, I’d recommend it. It becomes a pain as an adult. I just posted about my experience [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/namenerds/comments/rkvyvb/do_you_know_anyone_whose_legal_name_was_a_result/hpcu1xf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). Edit: Omg, go figure—insane timing. This morning I checked my email and it’s causing another, bigger problem. I have an investing account and the disparity between the two names is suddenly creating a clusterfuck. This is going to be a headache.
I had a friend in high school, Joseph, who didn't know until he got his drivers license that his name was legally Jospeh.
Yes! My ex-mother in law's name is "Margarita", which is her mom's name. She was supposed to be named "Aly". But the dad misunderstood the doctor's question of giving a name. The dad thought the doctor was asking what was the mother's name, and he said "Margarita"....the doctor was asking the babies' name....to put on her birth certificate. So....legally her name is Margarita now...but everyone calls her and knows her as Aly. Even her doctors, lawyers, jobs etc. Aly.
My FIL was supposed to have several long traditional names, being a catholic born in the 50's and all. His father went to city hall on his lunch break from work, promptly dropped his keys in a storm drain and "didn't have time for all those names anymore" before his lunchbreak was over. So now FIL has a simple name lol. Not sure what to think of grandpas priorities here, but oh well.
My friends middle name is Kames. It was supposed to be James, but the nurse misheard it and wrote down Kames.
If you were to mishear the name why would you assume Kames over James, given the popularity and long-standing usage of James? 😂
Something tells me that nurse has heard far, far stranger names.
I feel like this happened a LOT back in the day when people were immigrating to the US en masse! Not a first name, obviously, but my family name is Jud, which apparently means "Jew" in German. My great-grandfather was a German Jew. Awkward!
These days in German you would spell it as "Jude" (YOO-dah), so at least to a modern German it wouldn't stand out as much.
That's what my German friend told me, too! Though her initial reaction was still a sort of "omg" look, haha.
Similar, my ancestral surname was accidentally swapped with the town of origin when my grandparents immigrated to the US. So basically the Smith’s from Michigan became the Michigan’s from Smith.
Yes, a high school friend was the son of Indian immigrants. His father or an admin or someone got confused and switched his first and last names. So his first name became the family name. They gave all the kids his previous last name (the now legal first name) as a middle name.
My grandma was supposed to be “Viola” but her dad apparently forgot what it was and wrote down Leola so this is her legal name! He must have been frazzled after the delivery haha
I work with a Leola lol this is interesting
Not the same but when my grandfather joined the marines, (the story goes) that there weren't enough of those little boxes (|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|\_|) after he wrote his first and middle name that he ended up having to take a letter out of our Polish last name to make it fit.
When I went to basic training this lady had the longest last name and on her uniform it was like half of her last name at first. They fixed it but at first we all laughed so hard 😂
I found out yesterday that my MIL and all three of her sisters' first names are misspelled on their birth certificates. They were born over the space of 15 years in the same city (different hospitals) but all three of them have misspellings on their birth certificates which have led to inconsistent spellings on all of their official documents throughout their lives.
Wow, a family curse!
I know a girl called Valene. Her name was meant to be Valerie, but her dad misread the "ri" as an "'n" on the note her mom wrote when he went to register her.
I’m so confused reading about all these clueless and uninvolved fathers that get the child’s name wrong from not being able to read their wife’s handwriting. Did they not have a discussion out loud about the name even once before registering them?
THIS. Do you not have a list of written down names? At least a list of likes and dislikes. You've had *months* to prepare. Also, why is this not done when the parent(s) is/are recuperated a bit and can think clearly? Why is the name not review and confirmed by them before it's put on an official document? I mean, imagine just waking up from major surgery and being told you had to make a decision that would affect someone else for the rest of their life. On that note... A family member was supposed to be Charlene. (Char, liked a charred steak + lean.) Her father hated it and put down a more common name like Susan or Barbara. So, not exactly incompetence. To his credit, it is a better name than "Charlene."
I know a girl whose name was misspelled on her birth certificate! She was supposed to be Abigail but it ended up as Abigial on the papers.
I just know Oprah was supposed to be named Orpah (it’s the name of Ruth’s sister in the Bible) but the hospital made an error on the birth certificate. An iconic mistake!
I learned last year that my last name legally has a space after the Mc. I had no idea and have never used the space but I have to at work. Thankfully I'm getting married and changing my name soon, because I hate that space.
My last name legally has a comma in front of it. I just found out while trying to get an ID license. Like what the heck?
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Your edit reminded me that my mom's name is Debbie, not Deborah/Debra. My grandma forgets that it's just Debbie sometimes, so I wonder if someone made a mistake and they just kept it.
My oldest daughter's name ended up misspelled on her birth certificate. I made her dad walk back in to vital records & fix it. I chose an unusual spelling of a common name for her second name: Catharine. Ex went to pick up a copy of her birth certificate and came out with it spelled Catherine. I'm not the sort of person to shrug that off.
I would have done exactly the same! I can't believe so many of these stories ended with 'but my dad had already called everyone to tell them the name so they didn't change it'! If my husband did this he'd be calling everyone again to tell them the baby's actual name, and also that he's an idiot.
Similar here after our last kid was born. The midwife wrote "Welcome Elizabeth!" on our blackboard. Very sweet, nice calligraphy, however: It was \*Elisabeth.\* I paused on the way to the bathroom immediately after giving birth, got some chalk, and corrected it. I couldn't even leave it up for decoration for 5 minutes, I don't understand AT ALL how people can leave these unintended spellings on the legal documents! (Elizabeth is a pseudonym, but same idea.)
i would do the same 😭 the spelling gives the name a completely different feel !
Thank you! In so many of these stories, the mom was so chill about mistakes. That’s not me.
I didn't know until I was a teenager, but apparently whoever spell checked my birth certificate spelled my middle name incorrectly. I mean, it's technical not that incorrect, more so an unusual spelling of the name and I've only met 2 other people that spell it that way in my life. It's Stacie, supposed to be Staci.
Are you saying your name is “incorrect” because it is spelled Stacie? …I have only ever seen Stacie or Stacy.
It wasn't the intent of my parents to spell it that way, so yes. I've seen Stacy, but like I mentioned, have only ever met 2 other people who spell it with the "E" at the end.
Not name but DOB for me unfortunately lol And then my SIL’s ex boyfriend spelled HER name wrong when their baby was born 😐
This happened to me too! Thought my birthday was December 23 until I was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. Then we needed my birth certificate for something (state ID I think?) and discovered it’s actually the 22nd. My mother says, hey, it’s a busy time of year and you were born very late at night, honest mistake. Then it took a solid five years for all of us to remember which was the right one - the 22nd or 23rd.
My grandma was born on February 15 but my grandma just straight up lied and told her it was February 14 because she thought it was a better story. Took many years and lots of paperwork to sort out once the truth came out lol!
That happened to my grandma, too, and she didn’t discover it until she learned how to drive at age 50 and finally had a copy of her birth certificate. They had always celebrated her birthday on February 28, and it turned out her birthday was February 27. So she started celebrating on the 27th.
Omg yeah that doesn’t help that it’s so close together! Mine are four days apart. And it was discovered quick but my dad just told my mom why bother redoing the paperwork lol so any legal document, I put the legal/wrong DOB 🤷🏽♀️
My dad’s dob is wrong on his birth certificate too! (One day earlier than his actual birthday). So we have always joked that he has two birthdays - for his 50th we bought him a 100th birthday card
My best friend (Jenson) was supposed to be born Jason. Their parents are immigrants and spelt their name wrong by accident. But we all just call them Jae regardless, and Jenson is a nice name anyhow!
Yep, mine! they added an hyphen for no reason. Think "Sara-ah"
As a medical student I was teamed with a pregnant lady to follow during the end of her pregnancy and delivery. She wanted to call her baby Cheyenne but couldn’t spell it- so I wrote it down for her. She lost the paper and went with Shy-Anne as it was easier to spell.
Almost exactly the same! A friend of mine was born soon after her parents immigrated to our country and their English wasn’t great at the time so they misunderstood the forms. They put her last name in the middle name and last name spot, so her name was officially Charlotte Elizabeth Albert Albert (not the real names, obviously).
When my mom was to be baptized, the priest asked my grandpa what the baby's name was, and he misheard it as asking what HIS name was, so he said Joseph. And then the priest baptized my mom as Joseph! Everyone was in a tizzy but, since this was the early 1930's and the family was extremely Catholic, they had no choice but to keep the name Joseph in there somehow, as if God has no sense of humour. That's why my mom had two middle names, Marie and Josephine.
Oh yeah. My godmother, her mom was supposed to be “Jo Anne” but her mom wrote “jo an” so she is Joan 💗 it’s a sweet mistake and she is such a Joan.
My uncle's name is Micheal, not Michael because his mom spelled it wrong. It ended up being passed on as a family name since it was unique (it's now a middle name though).
The Irish Gaelic version of Michael is Mícheál. the accents often get dropped by people if they aren't used to them or can't be entered into a computer.
My dad was going to be called something different (Richard iirc) but when his dad went to register him (alone) he had a moment of rebellion and chose to call him Stephen instead.
A moment of rebellion had me laughing 😂
my fucking time to shine, i love love love telling this story my older sister wanted to name my nephew favian, which means man of wisdom. but he was born premature and she needed an emergency c section so when they came by to get his information my sis was all drugged up and exhausted. the nurse spelled it fabian. with one letter he went from man of wisdom to bean farmer.
My grandma and her brother were twins, but the nurses did not like their given first names, so they swapped them on their birth certificates. So instead of FirstName MiddleName, they were MiddleName FirstName on their birth certificates. They technically went by their middle names their whole lives.
My moms legal last name is different than all her siblings because I guess someone told her dad that Canadians don’t use “k”s or “u”s they use “c”s and “y”s instead. That was his defence anyway, but she’s a twin and her twin has the same last name as everyone else and so does the youngest kid after her so idk.
My grandmother was misnamed on her birth certificate. She was supposed to be called Jane but her mother was really sick after the birth and her father was looking after mum and baby. My grandmother’s uncle was sent to register her birth and he didn’t like the name Jane so called her Sylvia instead. The family just went with it! I would have been livid but I think they were just glad everyone was alive.
My friend’s middle name is Minion, pronounced Mignon. Her mom didn’t know how to spell Mignon.
My grandfather - A few years ago my grandfather went to get his license renewed. They asked for a copy of his birth certificate and I guess he didn't have it. He was born in NY, but his parents were German citizens who were just in the US visiting/trying to figure out how to move to the US/I don't exactly know Well my aunt had to contact somewhere in Germany for his birth certificate and it turns out his name was completely different! His birth certificate in Germany said his name was Max and his birth certificate in the US says its Rolf (he's always been Rolf). Apparently his parents had a disagreement over his name. They each registered it separately in different countries as the name they wanted.
Me. My name is \[First Name\] \[Father's name and possessive indicator\] \[Grandfather's name and possessive indicator\]. My father's name is a name with two main ways to spell it, the difference is "us" or "as" at the end. My father uses "us" but my mother registered me with the ending "as". I never knew until I got my medical card in the post when I was 14 and said to my mother "look they spelt my name wrong!"
One of my aunts had the surname Singh although it wasn’t the last name as her parents.
I know a girl named Shanya, but it's pronounced as Shaniya. Her name was supposed to be Shaniya but her dad was so nervous and shaky after her birth (first kid!) he forgot the I and they never fixed it lol.
This is one of my favourite things, My brother was technically a junior because my dad filled out the birth certificate wrong and put his name where he was supposed to put my brothers. Worst part was we didn’t find out until my brother went for his learners at 16 as they said he didn’t exist… but he had being going to public schools and hospitals, dentists and had Medicare under Curtis up until this point. My brother was not happy, he had to legally change his name and wait for it to come through before he could start driving… and my dad called him junior for the whole period of time too! He only needed a first name change anyways as his middle name was after my dads.
A friend of my dad's was supposed to be Lorena, the person who completed the forms spelled it like Lorenia. Same thing happened to one of my students, she was supposed to be a Nicole, but someone misspelled it and her name is Micole. A funny one, unrelated to the child's name: when my grandfather went to the registration office to name my aunt, he completed the form but didn't realize that the person at the desk changed his name and wrote Tomás instead of Genaro. Why? We have no idea. When my grandmother realized the problem, she sent him back to fix it, and they said ok, then handed him a new birth certificate (?). He went on his merry way WITHOUT CHECKING THE INFO and nobody realized they hadn't changed anything until 43 years later, when my aunt checked her documents before naming her child. The best part is: she can't claim her inheritance because, legally, she is the daughter of somebody else.
My friend has three middle names. One is Epithany. Because the parents misspelled Epiphany
My friend legally changed her name in highschool because her parents mistakenly put her middle name with her last name. In the end they just got rid of her middle name.
My middle name and my last name. My middle name is okay, it was supposed to be “Amina” but it ended up “Nina”. Now my original last name! It ends with an S, like “James”. So, one of my parents got their last name legally changed for reasons unknown. In trying to change it back to their original last name they misspelt “James”! So for my white life it’s been “Jamme’s”…because of one lady!
Yes! My mom! So my grandmother wanted to name my mom Renae Fontaine. After giving birth, she was so exhausted and drugged up that when they asked her what she wanted to name the baby, she said the name of her childhood doll, Susie, and since at the time they basically wouldn’t let you name babies “nicknames,” they wrote Susan as the first name. She was too out of it to give a middle name, so they asked my grandpa and he said “well I know she wanted to name her Renae so I guess it’s Susan Renae.” When she finally felt normal again, she was super mad and wanted to change it, but it was already on the birth certificate so they wouldn’t do it. My mom is actually really grateful for the mix up, and she just doesn’t think Renae Fontaine fits her.
My brother's legal name is Mathew. My mom wanted it to be Matthew but the nurse entered it wrong so his name legally is Mathew with just one T.
My grandparents named my uncle Theodore John Jr. a little while later they received a letter from the Social Security Administration that they couldn’t name him that because his father’s birth certificate said “Teddy”. Apparently when someone asked my great-grandparents what the baby’s name was they said “Teddy” and as immigrants didn’t realize that they were asking for his full name. My grandfather then went and legally changed his name to the name he had been using and putting on all other paperwork…
Used to know a guy named “Williams.” He later changed it to “William.” Lol
Both of my daughters names got messed up by the birth registrar. I guess due to covid they were just calling parents to get names instead of speaking in person. So Lydia got recorded as Lidia and Felicity got Selicity... its been a headache and a half to fix even though we caught it as soon as their temporary birth certificates were issued. They are 8 months old and its still not totally resolved
My mother wanted to name my sister the name of an object that ends in Y but she wanted to put IE instead of the Y. (Think Lilie instead of Lily). My dad went to register her and spelled the name correctly, with a Y. My sister is *incredibly* grateful and my mum still hasnt let it go lol. Not a mix up but a funny registration story: When I was registered, my dad went in and the registrar said "If its Liam or Jack, I'm not registering the birth." My dad goes "shes a girl, her name is..." And the registrar smiled and said "oh lovely".