My own father was a prime example of how names can change by accident or by choice. Dad was christened Garvice Galvin BRANDT. In his adult years he chose to go by the name of “Jack”, although I do remember in family situations he was called Garvice. I am pretty sure my Mum always referred to him as Garvice. But it wasn’t uncommon for him to fill in forms with Jack.
I remember early on in my family history journey, that even though I knew the details of when and where my parents were married, I didn’t have any documentation. So I chose to go down the road of proving it with research. It is here that I ran into trouble as I started my search with my father and I chose to search on Ancestry.
For the life of me I could not find any records for a marriage between Garvice Galvin Brandt and my mother Ruby Florence Briggs. In frustration I took a break and decided that I would search for the Marriage records in my mother’s name. You guessed it, there was the record for their marriage! So I figured that I must have missed something and went back and searched for Marriage records in my father’s name again. Nothing came up, there just wasn’t any Marriage record in the name of Garvice Galvin Brandt. So I did another search under my mother’s name and it came up again.
But on a closer look, I realised that I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing. Yes the record was for Ruby Florence Briggs but my father was listed on the Ancestry record as Gravice Joseph Brandt! It was then that I had a vague memory that Dad’s confirmation name was Joseph. So that possibly may have a been Dad’s choice when filling out the Marriage form. But I can only surmise the Gravice was a transcription error in Ancestry. I have since obtained a Transcription Certificate that clearly states his name as Garvice Joseph Brandt. So we have a clear case here of name change by “accident” and by “choice.”
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