From: myths@ic24.net   
      
   On Thu, 7 May 2020 16:03:32 +0100, Jenny M Benson   
    wrote:   
      
   >On 07/05/2020 13:32, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:   
   >> People often don't know what even their close relatives are really   
   >> called. When I was born my mother was going to call me John Athelstan,   
   >> but decided on Athelstan John so that I wouldn't have the same initials   
   >> as my aunt, who my mother thought was called Joyce Althea. In fact she   
   >> was called Althea Joyce, so the "correction" created the very problem my   
   >> mother wanted to avoid. She could of course have consulted my father,   
   >> but this was wartime and he was probably at sea at the time   
   >   
   >By that token, some parents don't even know what their children are   
   >called!  I have several people in my tree who were registered and/or   
   >baptised as First Middle and then appear in Censuses etc as Middle   
   >First.  Sometimes the change is made between Birth Registration and Baptism.   
      
   Anecdote 1   
   I was asked by an acquaintance to determine the connection of one of   
   her relatives to a university College in the late 19C-early 20C.  I   
   found that he had submitted (on request) a copy of his birth   
   certificate, on which someone from the College had noted that his two   
   given names were in reverse order from the order used by him and his   
   school in his application documents.  He had not been baptised.   
   I went further than my remit and looked for the family in census and   
   BMD indexes.  All four (parents, daughter, son) had official records   
   showing swapping of given name order at some time or other.   
      
   Anecdote 2   
   Long ago I was at a CoE baptism where the vicar asked for the child's   
   name at the appropriate moment.  There was first a silance  (the   
   parents had, a few moments before been told that it was not their   
   place to speak, one godparent was worried he might inadvertantly say a   
   family name that no one has been prepared to give their own child   
   since the 19C, another godparent  realised she did not know the baby's   
   middle name; the third godparent was a proxy and felt the others   
   should speak) and then a lot of people spoke at once.  The  vicar   
   heard and used the names in reverse order.  The parents asked him   
   before they left the church what the result was regarding the child's   
   names and he said they should use the order on the birth certificate..   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)