Male relative listed as female with female name on birth certificate? Vic 1870s

[zhenger]

Hi all,

This is a weird question but perhaps someone has run across something similar.

I was recently aiming to download the birth certificate of my great-grandfather (born 1878) from the Victorian BDM website. When I searched, there was no-one by his given name (Francis Lorenzo) but there was a very similar female name (Frances Louisa). I assumed this was a transcription error, but when I downloaded the certificate, the child's name is definitely Francis Louisa and the sex is given as female.

In all other details (parents, place of birth, date of birth, other siblings, etc.) it is consistent with other information about my great-grandfather. There is no information about Frances Louisa on other databases (apart from this birth certificate) and plenty for Francis Lorenzo.

Could this have just been a mistake in transcription at the time, both with name and gender? For example, whoever transcribed the name wrote it down wrongly then assumed the wrong gender? I can't think of anything else plausible... I've heard of boys being raised as girls sometimes but there is no evidence that happened, and he certainly fathered many children and was a bass singer! Has this happened to anyone else?

Thanks.

[KGarrad]

I have the opposite!

My mother needed a full certificate when she was an adult.
The certificate arrived with:
Names: Joyce Cicely
Sex: Boy

Turned out to be an administrative error, and a replacement certificate was sent!

[Rena]

I've heard that Mother Nature throws up a few surprises and apparently your ancestor was one of them.  Here's a website that gives a bit of information:

https://www.urologyhealth.org/urology-a-z/a_/ambiguous-(uncertain)-genitalia

[Crumblie]

I have a great aunt called Archibald and that is the christian name on all of her certificates. It should have been Andrina and I don't know why the error was replicated on her marriage and death.

[aghadowey]

My grandmother's sister Annie was registered as Andrew- perhaps person taking the details misheard Annie as Andy then wrote Andrew. 

[Viktoria]

There can also be temporary conditions when a surge of hormones at the end of pregnancy can mean baby boys can have swollen breasts with milk  and baby girls have enlarged parts resembling testes and a penis .
Prior to the understanding of these conditions ,many years ago babies with a vagina but what appeared to be also male parts but were swollen female parts were really surgically mutilated .
I speak of well over a hundred years ago.
What tragedies.
Viktoria.

[Beth42]

When my great aunt's birth was registered the Civil Registration entry was - "No.390 James Mitchell, Male born First January 1898 at 43˝ Foyle Road, Derry Father James Mitchell, a Pork Merchant and Mother Jane Mitchell formerly McFarlane [sic]." The informant was Sarah Laird who was present at the birth, but could not sign her name. In the margin "In No.390 Col 3 for 'James' read 'Jane' and Col 4 for  'M' read 'F'. Corrected on 25 October 1957 by me J K Perry. Interim Supt.Registrar on the Production of a Statutory declaration made by Anne Laidlaw and Margaret Mitchell persons having knowledge of the truth of the case".  I was told that the mother was seriously ill at the time and the persons making the declaration were also my great aunts.

[Ruskie]

I don’t know how thoroughly you have already searched, but there may be other explantations for a”missing” birth registration eg:

- the birth was not registered
- the surname was misspelled
- his birth was registered with a different first name or first and second names swapped around
- he was born earlier or later than you expect

Have you looked to see if this female child died young which may explain why she doesn’t seem to appear in later records.

[zhenger]

Thanks for all these replies! There are many potential explanations but I would guess that an error is the most likely.

There's no record of a female child dying around that time and the birth certificate is consistent with his stated age at other times. A mistaken gender or intersex is also possible, although given the time (Australia in the 1870s) I'm not sure if there would have been reconstructive surgery advanced enough to allow him to father children. DNA tests indicate that he really was the parent (the children weren't adopted).

I guess it's also possible that his parents decided to raise a boy as a girl for whatever reason, but there's no other evidence for that. There's no correction on the birth certificate but perhaps no-one in his family ever looked at it while he was alive.