Name Discrepancies
I see a lot of people talking about name discrepancies and have a lot of worries. I have heard that some consulates are pretty cool with a letter or two being off, as long as your paperwork successfully proves the people are the people, to other consulates that will send you away with homework to further substantiate your claim. Before I start with my name problems in my paperwork, I would suggest do your due diligence. Some states allow relatives to update information on vital, some states require court orders to update information, and some states just plain won't do it at all. For the states that won't do anything, I've heard that the consulate may require you to go to the court where the vital record is from and get some sort of "one-in-same" order where you can prove to a judge that the person with the misspelled name is the person you say they are.
A good amount of worries I've seen, mostly on reddit, are people stating that a letter is off. Like "Aromando" would be spelled "Armondo". This was one of my name discrepancies, but since I believed that was pretty minor, I submitted it.
the other one though... My GGF, growing up in New Castle, PA, he went by the name Charles George. Quite a stretch from Arsenio Giordano. My aunt that does genealogy said that he played baseball minor league of some sort, and a lot of immigrants would go by American or "Anglicized" names, but normally it was changing a Francesco to Frank, or Federico to Fred. I was unable to find any kind of reference of my GGF ever playing baseball. I did find a Charles George that payed baseball, but I think it was in New Jersey, not New Castle. I have a feeling it may have something to do with where he worked and the owners of the steel mill were Charles and George. Maybe just be a coincidence, who knows. I talk more about it here in my blog if you're interested!
So my GGF went by this name in most documents looks to be around 20 years old. His name listed on death certificate was Charles Giordano George. And then my GF's father's name on his birth certificate is Charles George. So naturally, my GF name on his birth certificate is Joseph George. Great! My aunt had told me that she had looked into updating the information because it's wrong, and PA said that if the person's deceased, it cannot be changed. (Not all states are like this! If you have a name discrepancy you may have to do something different!)
I was pretty nervous about those names being messed up. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but I believe I emailed the consulate in LA to ask them about it. I eventually got a phone call while I was at work. I remembered the guy's name I talked to was Francesco (same as my GGGF). I told him that my GF name was a different name on his birth certificate, but I had other documents to prove everything. He said in a very thick Italian accent not to worry about it and they will go over everything at the appointment.
My case may be saved because there is a clear cross-reference between the two names on my GGF naturalization paperwork:
Another shameless plug for LegalShield here: I wanted to be sure I did everything I could so I contacted LegalShield which I've been a member of for almost 2 decades! (I love it so much, I became a sales rep, I'm working on a site, but if you want to just dive in and have a lawyer, sign up here!) I contacted the AZ lawyers for LegalShield and told them the situation. The lawyer here in Tempe reached out to a LegalShield attorney in Pittsburgh who was able to send me a letter from that lawyer's office to let the consulate know that my GF name cannot be amended on his birth certificate. It might do nothing, or it may show that I did my diligence. We shall see.
If you have a name discrepancy, I'm hoping this helps calm you if it's minor. I still think that the best way to handle them is amend the docs if you can, but if you can't, find all the evidence that you can to prove the people in your line are the people in your line. I also received documents from the Diocese of Pittsburgh whom also had records of my GF and GGF that I added in.