Genealogy Chat

has anyone else found a marriage certificate of someone getting married but not using the christian name they were given at birth. Why would they do that of course they may not have liked their name but I have just found a marriage of a Wlter Albert but his name was Albert walter baptised in that name and registered in that name
Margaret

Margaret, this is very common I believe. For example, my great-grandfather was born Harris Horace but dropped the Harris bit and married as Horace. (Not sure if that was a good decision or not!)
People often adopted their 2nd name as their known name and just went on to use it for everything.
Jan

I found one like this just the other day.

Birth Alice May, Marriage May Alice

Try and corroborate with other evidence. Census returns, perhaps?

Margaret, I have a family of Thomas Williams and William Thomas's. They all seem to have used Thomas or William as their names depending on how the mood took them at the time. I have the family in one of the census as Head Thomas, son Thomas son William and another son Thomas. Obviously they had run out of names (there were more children in the house) so had got into recycling!
It is a nightmare trying to sort the family in the census which is not helped by father and son marrying sisters and the grandfather was Thomas (or was it William?) and his brother also had the same names.

HI Margaret - very common in my family!
One g grandmother was registered Agnes Amelia - henceforth was known as Amelia - even on censuses. She is also down on 8 of her 10 children's birth certs as Mrs---- - even though she and my g grandad didn't marry until they'd had 8 children!
G grandfather on the other side was Stanley on gran's birth cert, his wedding cert, the 1901 census, his death cert - even on his gravestone - but was Gifford on his birth cert and the 1891 cenus - Stanley wasn't even his second name.
He took me 2 years to find as two of his brothers also changed their names!
My grandad's best mate was 'Unce Stan' to my mum - but his real name was George.
I could go on - they were all at it!

Margaret, it may be that if someone had been known by their middle name all their life, they may not even know what their legal name was. When you have a lot of children in the family it's not unusual for even the parents to get confused.

I have one family with 2 daughters in particular, I've found the girls living with their mum on 2 census' 20 years apart and in terms of their age, they are described on both as being 2 years apart in age. However, when I looked for their birth cert, it appears they may be twins, they were registered together. How hard is it to remember you had twins?!

Margaret,
My mothers grandmother used her middle name right through all the census and marriage.
She only used her full name when she started to draw her pension...if it wasnt for my mother remembering this...I dont think I would have found her birth cert.
Kay

My father
Cyril Leslie R...

His father
Cyril William R...

My father was told the story (By his mother) that he was to be registered as plain Leslie but his paternal Grandmother kicked up such a fuss that the 'Cyril' was added to appease her.

Which is strange as she only ever called her husband....

BILL!!!!

So no real love of the name Cyril..lol

Chris

My grandmother was born and baptised as Isabella May.

Whilst I think these names are very pretty, she was known to her family as May. She was known as 'May' only for the rest of her long life.

When she was in her 80's she told me that her name was 'Isabella' and I was amazed. It didn't seem to suit this little old lady!

My gt Grandmother was 'Hannah', but was married as 'Annie'.

Alice

In fact I very nearly did it when my daughter was born in the 1970s

We had 2 names for her, and I intended to register her as Joan Mary (not her real names!), to be called Mary


only all the nurses in the hospital insisted on calling her Joan


so I changed the names around before OH went down to register her


so her birth certificate says Mary Joan,


and she is known as Mary



or May

or M



as the mood takes us or her friends!




That quite simply is probably what happened in a lot of cases!



sylvia

My relative was Annie on the census. She married as Annie. Her birth cert is Phoebe Ann

My great grandfather was born Augustus Frederick Charles
Married as Charles Frederick
Died as Augustus Charles.

So it was a case of perm any 2 from 3

My mother was registered as Enid Joan, but was know as Joan all her life.
Problems started when she went into a nursing home and they insisted on calling her Enid

Thank you for all your replies he wa not from a large family 2 girls 2 boys and fathers name was William, I gather perhaps he just did not like Albert.
I know my own mother was known as Audrey she never used her real name of Mabel because she did not like it but she did use it on any offical papers everyone got a shock when she died and they found out her name'

Margaret

I've always been known as Allan, which is my middle name - except to doctors, dentists and the like. I've even managed to get Allan as my name on my bus pass.

But a word of warning to middle-name users - don't try using it on airline tickets, because if the name on your ticket doesn't match the full name on your passport you could be denied access to your flight.

My father. George, married my mum using his brother's name (William). He was AWOL from the army at the time!

Just imagine trying to sort that one out in 50 years time! William never married so the descendants would have thought that their ancestor was. well, William when it was really George!

Pat

My mum and dad agreed on my brothers name, and dad went off to register it. When he got there, he had the sudden urge to add the name of his best mate from RAF aircrew days in the war as a middle name. He didn't tell mum, and just slipped the birth cert. away in the bureau, not to looked at again until brother was almost grown up.

I'm afraid I would be one of those people whose known name is different to their birth name. My birth certificate says Carole Frances, but I was baptised by an Italian priest a couple of weeks later who translated this to Carla Francesca. My parents preferred this so I have always been known as Carla Frances (a mix of both!). Half my documents are in one name and half in another, e.g. bank accounts, driving licence etc etc. But as one of the members said, I have to be very careful when booking airline tickets to use my birth name. Confusing or what!!