Birth certificate name issue

Flugelhorn

Cruelsco said:

TBagpuss said:

It shouldn't be a problem but id you are worried, then for things like a will you can ask that your details re shown as "Allan Jones (also or formerly known as Alan Jones) 
I don't *think* you would be able to get the birth certificate changed. 

You may however want to ask your parents (if they are still around) to check spellings in their wills etc to ensure that they are consistent with your passport .

A birth certificate isn't proof of ID so it's very unlikely to come up 

Thanks for this feedback.

I think I've got some overthinking going on my mind that's not even likely to happen.

I keep thinking what if my birth certificate was checked when we do the title deeds to our house and it doesn't match - this probably doesn't even happen but I've never done this before so was unsure.

Another thing I thought about is that were expecting our first child this year, would my birth certificate need checked when were registering him? Again...I think im overthinking this. 

The vibe im getting is that considering my passport is correct and all other IDs I have are correct, I dont think this is something that I should be too worried about, as you said...I could always use the formally known as thing - I assume I dont actually need formal documentation for that considering my passport is spelled the way I have been known all my life?

Any occasion where you need ID it will be the passport or some other photo / official ID. Birth certs after you get your first passport are pretty irrelevant. 

Re any other occasion I should wait until someone notices and don't mention it (highly unlikely that they would the BC and if they did it is clear that you are the person on the cert) - interesting how people often  don't notice slight variations in other people's names anyway 

Interesting re registering children - mine are in their 20s but I didn't need any ID, the registrar just asked names and "how are you spelling Horatio " (or whatever) - you would be entirely reasonable in just giving your name as you always use it. 

doodling

Hi,

You can call yourself anything you like, there is no such thing as an official name.  You can even have different names for different purposes providing you are not using them to commit fraud (many women use both their maiden name and their partners surname after marriage for example).

The government has however created a lot of bureaucracy (both internally and through money laundering legislation) which makes changing your name or having two at once challenging.

The fact that your birth certificate has your name spelt differently to the rest of your IDs won't cause any issues for a marriage unless there are other reasons for someone to believe that you are perpetuating some kind of fraud.

You will however avoid a lot of hassle if you avoid using your birth certificate as an ID document for other purposes as some jobsworth will almost certainly use it as an excuse to avoid having to do something.

Cruelsco

doodling said:

Hi,

You can call yourself anything you like, there is no such thing as an official name.  You can even have different names for different purposes providing you are not using them to commit fraud (many women use both their maiden name and their partners surname after marriage for example).

The government has however created a lot of bureaucracy (both internally and through money laundering legislation) which makes changing your name or having two at once challenging.

The fact that your birth certificate has your name spelt differently to the rest of your IDs won't cause any issues for a marriage unless there are other reasons for someone to believe that you are perpetuating some kind of fraud.

You will however avoid a lot of hassle if you avoid using your birth certificate as an ID document for other purposes as some jobsworth will almost certainly use it as an excuse to avoid having to do something.

Yeah - my plan is to continue using my name as it is and as I’ve been known by all my life. Like you said, I imagine some jobsworth would try to cause issues over 1 letter so I’ll avoid using it. 

Personally haven’t ever used it as ID in the last 33 years so I don’t imagine I will be anytime soon. 

Thanks everyone for the feedback, certainly eased my mind a bit! 

Spendless

Birth certificates are so rarely used as proof of identify because they're not photo ID.

I'd be intrigued to ask your parents though why they spelt it one way and then knew you as another. My son is known by the shortened version of his name, but when learning to write aged 4 when he started school, they fetched out the long version and he came home and insisted it was spelt differently. He was so convinced he was correct, I even got his birth certificate out to check myself - lol. Turned out son was wrong. Had I not insisted on looking it up at that point though, he may well have gone through life with a different spelling to his birth certificate. 

Sarahspangles

Sadly this means that even if you get the call you won’t be able to play for Scotland.

Cruelsco

Sarahspangles said:

Sadly this means that even if you get the call you won’t be able to play for Scotland.

Probably in Scotlands best interests haha

theoretica

You could check the original birth registry - https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/  clerical errors do happen, and could be an error of whoever copied the register to produce the  birth certificate.

If you really care you could get it changed.

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/registration/recording-change-of-forename-and-surname-in-scotland

Cruelsco

Spendless said:

Birth certificates are so rarely used as proof of identify because they're not photo ID.

I'd be intrigued to ask your parents though why they spelt it one way and then knew you as another. My son is known by the shortened version of his name, but when learning to write aged 4 when he started school, they fetched out the long version and he came home and insisted it was spelt differently. He was so convinced he was correct, I even got his birth certificate out to check myself - lol. Turned out son was wrong. Had I not insisted on looking it up at that point though, he may well have gone through life with a different spelling to his birth certificate. 

Funnily enough in my frustration I spoke to them about this last night.

Neither remember this and were certain it was spelt with two L's on my birth certificate.

The biggest curiosity for me is how they managed to get the correct variant on my passport - first passports need the birth certificate(at least this is my understanding) so unless the passport office didn't see it as a big deal and happily altered it, I've got no clue!

Its something that's never caused me issues in the past and when I think about it, I've never been asked to show a birth certificate so its never came up...with my first child on the way and my partner and I thinking of getting married in a couple of years, I thought to look out a copy of my birth certificate as I know its needed for marriage and that's how I found out.

I think I've just had a lot of what ifs in my head especially as were about to complete on a property too and I do have a tendency to overthink these things.

Even when you look back at my credit profile over the past 16-18 years, its only got the correct spelling and never shows up as the incorrect one.

Its a bizarre situation to have happened to say the least!

Nelliegrace

The problem is usually because the father raced off to register the birth on his own. 
Oh! The tears, because he didn’t  listen, didn’t check, forgot the bit of paper, and thought it could be corrected. “You did say xxxx, didn’t you? I thought it was something like that.”

unforeseen

My name is spelt with an 'i' on my birth certificate and I decided to spell it with a 'y' when I was about 12.

Ive had no problems whatsoever with the change in the last 55 years