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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Annie65115 on Thursday 23 July 09 20:34 BST (UK)
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My 2x gt grandmother died in 1910; I have a copy of her death certificate and several corrections were made on authority of the registrar, 5 months after her death and the inquest.
I've just got a copy of her birth certificate and it turns out that she was registered as male at birth, and this wasn't corrected until 5 months after her death at age 59 either!
Since she had 16 children I think I can be fairly sure that she was indeed female :)
Anyone else's ancestors had a rather belated sex change?
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That's amazing! I guess her parents couldn't read, and so didn't know what the registrar had written down? Did she have a girl's name?
By chance this came up at the start of this month here:-
Ever Seen This Before? (http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,390189.0.html)
Not quite the same thing, but a similar theme...
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A relative of mine (with parents well able to read and write) discovered that she was 'male' when getting a birth certificate for passport application and had a bit of bother getting it all sorted out.
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Was it just due to a very absent minded registrar who wrote something like "Susan Smith, male" on the birth certificate? What a shock for her! I've never heard of this before, and am having a bit of trouble working out such a mistake could happen? I've heard of drunk vicars giving children the wrong names, but this is such a basic thing.
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No, worse than that her Christian name was changed to a similar, but not identical, male name.
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That's terrible! So the registrar wasn't listening to whoever said "Her name is..." then?! He sounds like a bit of a twit (I'm assuming the registrar was a he...) How could someone just assume that the sex was one thing or another?
Mind you, I'd always thought Evelyn was a girl's name, just because I'd only ever heard it associated with women, until I heard of Evelyn Waugh. Hillary, simlarly, so I guess this person was biased the other way round.
Even so, it should still be a matter of protocol to actually *ask* what the sex was, though.
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Forgot to mention that Aunt was named after her mother (whose name was correct on the certificate) :-\
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hi guys
a friend of mine has reacently obtained a birth certificate for a passport then found he was a girl on the certificate. so i wonder who was responsible for that little error.