Genealogy Chat

my mam gets called catherine yet on her birth cert she is clearly Kathleen she was married as Catherine. SO is she really married . funny one eh?

Sounds like it was a Texas thing - you should have gone to California - I moved there a couple of years before you, and never needed an extra name, although I did wind up with several documents where my middle name was recorded as Nmn, i.e., no middle name.

mgnv

Re names in North America .... or rather, the US


I have only one given name.

I married in 1967 and moved to Texas.

When I got a job I was told that I HAD to have 2 names in addition to my surname, and one of those names HAD to be my maiden name


so I became Sylvia xxxx xxxxxx on all official documents from the university, at the same time I was Sylvia xxxxxx on "domestic" things.

I had to countersign all cheques twice because the joint account had been set up using Sylvia xxxxxx (and that was in the days when you were given a cheque at work, and then you had to take the cheque to the bank to deposit it yourself).

I was told that a woman who had two given names lost one of those names when she married, and it was replaced by her maiden name.

I was told that was the tradition in Texas.



Conversely .............. my husband has 3 given names, and he had to LOSE one of them 'cos you weren't allowed to have more than two given names!

The problem with that was remembering which two given names had been used where and when!





Canada's much more sensible! I'm allowed to have only one name and he is allowed to have all 3.



sylvia

I've noticed several instances of people moving to N America, and acquiring a middle name they never had before. Often, it was a family surname that was added. I've not seen a really radical change of forename, though.

Thanks David,

I'm not going to jump to conclusions with this one, but it is a coincidence.

The surname is relatively unusual and a search throughout the whole of Scotland during a ten year span only gives me one result and it's within a year of my individuals birth and the same location.

It's a tricky one!

Gary

Hi everyone,

I trying to find an indivual who was born in Scotland in the mid 1700s.

The problem is that I can find only one person with the matching surname in the time frame and location but the first name is different. This man emegrated to America where he was known by a different first name and appears on census records and his death record.

What I want to know is, is it likely to be him and how unusual is it that people would change first names instead of surnames at this time?

What's your thoughts, I'd be grateful for any response!

Thanks,
Gary