G2G: Which first name should I use?

Question

Researching the Oatway branch of my family I have a quandary: this person was recorded in the GRO birth record as "Ketty", but this appears to be the only occurrence of this name. Her baptism record and the 1841 census record her as "Kitty". Thereafter she and her family seem to disappear from the records for a few years, excepting her mother's death, and her father's remarriage.

The next  record is the marriage of "Catherine" Oatway to John Macdonald in 1852. Later there is a death record on GRO for Catherine Macdonald in 1878, at age 37, which agrees with her date of birth in early 1841.

Which name should I use, "Ketty" as that is on the birth record, "Kitty" as that appears to be how she was known as a child, or "Catherine" as it appears she later used the expanded version of her name?

Answer 1

Hi Martin. To simplify things you could make a reasonable assumption: "Ketty" either was a contemporary spelling mistake or is a modern mis-transcription for "Kitty".

The question then becomes whether the parents always intended her formal name to be Catherine and just used Kitty as a diminutive while she was a child, or whether she took the step to use Catherine herself later. I think the decision is up to you as profile manager. Either make proper first name Kitty and preferred name Catherine, or proper and preferred first name Catherine and nickname Kitty.

Comments

My grand aunt's given name was Bessie (to the great surprise of her adult son).  It's how her birth was registered.  It's how she was known in the family as a child.  
By the time of her first marriage at age 19 years, she was using the name Elizabeth, which was her preferred name until she died.
There was no question that she was ever "Elizabeth" when she was growing up.  She wasn't.  Not all names we see as diminutives actually are.

I would think the "Ketty" was either written incorrectly, or was transcribed incorrectly, and her first name from birth was Kitty until she started using Catherine.  I would not presume that she was ever Catherine as a child unless there is documentary evidence it was so.

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My feeling was that her name was Kitty and either the registrar mistook it for Ketty when pronounced in a broad Devon accent, or there was a mis-transcription at some stage. I agree that it was probable she decided to change the name she wanted to be known by.

Answer 2

The name appears as Ketty in the modern GRO index but in the contemporary handwritten one it appears as Kitty, and is transcribed so in FreeBMD. https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?r=4020168:0845&d=bmd_1677511478

As that agrees with the baptism entry, I think Ketty is likely a modern misreading.