My sister's been spelling her name wrong!

[NHdisneylover]

Being a nickname I bet your parents just figured she could spell it how she wanted once she deviated from their norm I am glad you are finding fun and good memories in the house, that is so good.

My grandmother is from the deep south--a share croppers daughter. Her entire family had the DEEP accents that would go along with that life. Her mother died when she was four and she started school at 6, having never seen her name written down (her father was illiterate).
With the deep drawl her name was pronounced somewhat like "Sih--Buh" On the first day of school she told the teacher her name and he wrote Syble. For 11 years she thought her given name was Syble. When she got married they did a records check and lo and behold her name was Sebiah. She asked her dad about it and he had no idea--he just shrugged and said he didn't bother with names that was the mother's bussiness Anyway, she still goes by Syble as that is all she really ever knew herself as, but on official documents it is Sebiah.

 

[barkley]

when my dad applied for social security my mom needed to get a certified copy of her birth certificate to submit. imagine her surprise when she learned that the name she had gone by her entire life was no where listed on her birth certificate.

apparantly she had been nicknamed as an infant and noone ever mentioned that her given name was entirely different.

i was'nt surprised that she had'nt had a need to ever get a b.c. earlier in life b/c given her age some things we take for granted as now requiring a b/c did'nt when she was younger (driver's license, s.s. card, marriage license) but i'm floored that it never came up when she was in catholic school (notorious even back then for making kids go by their legal given name-esp. when like in my mom's case she was named for a catholic saint), or in the foster care system.

she ended up having it legaly changed to her nickname, and it sent her older sister rushing to get HER b.c. to make sure she was going by the right name.

 

[MushyMushy]

So many of these stories are so much odder than my sister misspelling her nickname! Thanks for sharing. It's really funny!

It was similar for our dad, too, now that I think about it. His given name is one thing, but everybody knows him by a completely unrelated nickname (Bill). It gets extremely confusing for people. We never have been able to figure out how he got the unrelated nickname.

He also has a middle initial for a middle name on his birth certificate. He always thought his middle name was Morris, and later came to find it was just M. He still uses Morris though.

 

[eyeheartgoofy]

When my Mom was in her 40's, she had to get a copy of her birth certificate for a college course ... it was then that she realized that her middle name was "Anne", not "Ann".

 

[barkley]

So many of these stories are so much odder than my sister misspelling her nickname! Thanks for sharing. It's really funny!

It was similar for our dad, too, now that I think about it. His given name is one thing, but everybody knows him by a completely unrelated nickname (Bill). It gets extremely confusing for people. We never have been able to figure out how he got the unrelated nickname.

He also has a middle initial for a middle name on his birth certificate. He always thought his middle name was Morris, and later came to find it was just M. He still uses Morris though.

i have an in-law with a realy odd nickname. it has no basis in his given name but apparantly everyone on his dad's side who has the same given name was always called by the same nickname.

in law was never called by any name other than this his whole life-then he starts promoting up career wise and decides with a new job that he will only be known by his very formal sounding first name. worked well, except when social occasions caused interactions between his co-workers and his family. so he tells family he will no longer answer to the nickname. his mother tells him flat out that she will continue to call him what she's called him from the day he was born. the rest of the family go along with it to his face, but still refer to him in conversations by his nickname.

the funny thing is all this happened when my kids were realy little, so it took a while for them to figure out what they were supposed to call him-and in the meantime they would start out saying one name then correcting to the other midword. so now he's got his formal name, his disliked nickname, and his even moreso disliked hybrid slaughter nickname that a good portion of the family has taken to referring to him with

it's akin to being known as 'beanie', insisting on being called 'wellington' and ending up with your 3 year old nephew slaughtering it into 'belly-ton'

 

[tonilea]

When we were expecting Thomas, we were trying to decide on the spelling. My dad's name was spelled Tomas (not hispanic, though). Or so he thought. He was forced to go on disability and we had to order his birth cert. for the process. Turns out he had been spelling him name wrong his entire life. Of course, it made it easy to decide on a spelling! lol

 

[castmemberb4]

These stories are fun !

I have a copy of my BC with the wrong year on it ! Way back in the dark ages when my Mother needed a copy of it, they had to be hand written. The clerk put the wrong date on the form, then corrected it outside of the little box but didn't cross out the date in the box! When I went to get my learner's permit I tried to get her to let me use that wrong date and make myself 2 years older. Now I'm glad my Mother was a smart woman and didn't let me do that !

I also had a Great Uncle who had been called Doc all of his life, I have no idea why. His real name was James Caleb but when he joined the Army he didn't know how to spell Caleb so he told them his middle name was Charles.

 

[NotUrsula]

When I graduated from HS and needed my BC for enrolling in college, my mother handed it over, and I discovered that I'd been spelling my middle name wrong all my life. The name isn't English, and in the language that it is, the same word can be either a noun or an adjective; it's a homonym, but the two versions are spelled quite differently.

Mom was on pretty heavy drugs in the hospital, and when they asked her how to spell this strange name that none of the nurses had ever heard, she accidentally spelled the adjective version of it. We had always used the noun, but my University insisted that I had to use the legal one for my enrollment of record and degrees. My HS diploma is different than my college and graduate diplomas for that reason.

 

[MrsPete]

Here's a story along the same lines:

In the process of getting a death certificate for him, my grandmother discovered that my grandfather's middle name WAS NOT what we'd all believed. I mean it was a completely different name!

My aunt and uncle were shocked and could not explain this name thing. There's no one else whom we can ask. I wish we'd known this during his life. I'd like to know if he himself disliked his original middle name and changed it, or if his parents changed it and a second birth certificate existed. But I don't think this mystery is solve-able.

 

[JVL1018]

So many of these stories are so much odder than my sister misspelling her nickname! Thanks for sharing. It's really funny!

It was similar for our dad, too, now that I think about it. His given name is one thing, but everybody knows him by a completely unrelated nickname (Bill). It gets extremely confusing for people. We never have been able to figure out how he got the unrelated nickname.

He also has a middle initial for a middle name on his birth certificate. He always thought his middle name was Morris, and later came to find it was just M. He still uses Morris though.

My father in law's real name is Vincenzo. It is on his birth certificate and his army papers and that is it. EVERYTHING else has James on it. Along with a middle name that is not on his birth cert either. I have no clue how they came up with that.
His father's name was Salvatore, but everyone called him Tom and all of his papers other than his birth cert have Thomas on it.


When my great uncle was born, my g-grandma wanted to name him Gino Pasquale.
The nurse was filling out the birth certificate and didn't know how to spell Pasquale, so she just wrote down Gino P.
They never changed it, that was his legal name. LOL

 

[Suellen]

My grandmother found out very late in life (perhaps retirement) that her first name was not what she thought it was.

She has always been Anita Theresa and found out that she was in fact Theresa Anita. She was literally devastated and has taken to going by T. Anita.

She laughs about it now... but HATED it at the time!

 

[LadyZolt]

I also had a Great Uncle who had been called Doc all of his life, I have no idea why. His real name was James Caleb but when he joined the Army he didn't know how to spell Caleb so he told them his middle name was Charles.

Was he a medic? Many times, the corpsman or medic in the military is nicknamed "Doc" and they end up being called that from them on. My DH was a medic with the Marines and even though he's a Registered Nurse now, when he's talking to military people, they call him "Doc."

I think from this thread, we should all look at our birth certificates, and those of our kids, parents, etc., so we can know for sure what the names are. LOL!

-Dorothy