From: athel.cb@gmail.com   
      
   On 2023-11-04 08:39:07 +0000, JMB99 said:   
      
   > On 03/11/2023 19:38, Colin Bignell wrote:   
   >>   
   >> The question is, who wrote the name? Was it the person named, or a   
   >> parish clerk who wrote down what they thought they heard? A lot of my   
   >> ancestors made their mark* on marriage certificates, so obviously, in   
   >> their cases it was the latter, which could lead to variations.   
   >   
   >   
   >   
   > I remember when I started on family history, someone suggested that   
   > many people were illiterate or even if the could read and / or write,   
   > they might not be very proficient.  Also they had respect for 'their   
   > betters' so if a clerk or other official wrote down their name   
   > different to what they expected then they would not argue.   
   >   
   > Someone also pointed out that a wife might be literate but her husband   
   > 'signed' with a cross in the register then she might not want to   
   > embarrass by writing her name fully so also entered a cross.   
   >   
   > One set of great great grandparents married in Quebec.  He was from   
   > Yorkshire and she was Irish so presumably had accents.  The   
   > (presumably) French speaking official completely mangled all the names.   
   >  Could be just be him misunderstanding the accents or just the usual   
   > Frog bloody-mindedness.  :-)   
      
   (I may have said this already, in which case ignore it, but I _think_   
   it was in a different news group.)   
      
   My father was born in Nova Scotia in 1908. I needed a birth certificate   
   for a French administrative purpose, and that proved remarkably   
   difficult to get. They offered a photocopy of the entry in the   
   register, which was fine for my purpose. His second given name was   
   totally mangled, his mother's name was written with her second given   
   name (the one she actually used, at least when I knew her) omitted, his   
   father's occupation was given as steel worker (he was actually an   
   accountant for a coalmining company), the two elements of the surname   
   were the wrong way round, with the hyphen omitted, the birth place of   
   his father had a trivial (and frequent) error, Newton Abbott rather   
   than Newton Abbot. This was in Sydney, in the far east of Nova Scotia,   
   and I don't think French influence can be blamed -- maybe Gaelic in   
   Cape Breton Island.   
      
   --   
   Athel cb   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)