What's on your birth certificate shouldn't matter
What our parents register us as isn't the whole story
No one knows how to spell my sister’s middle name.
My sister came into my life when she was 12 and I was 14. We were introduced to each other for the first time in a McDonald’s carpark, just off the A4174.
It was an ideal setting: it was neutral ground, and we had quick access to McNuggets.
Life happens; and it’s always best to be prepared. Which is exactly what our Dad is doing right now: preparing for the inevitable, hopefully many many many decades before it happens.
Part of this process has meant that I, Chief Daughter, and assigned future potential power of attorney and executor, have had to collect the full names, birthdays and addresses of all four of my sisters, and my niece, to make sure that all the paperwork is correct.
Now, the big group chat made checking all these details much much easier. What wasn’t easy was asking them all to check their passports and driving licences to make sure what they had told me was reflected in ‘evidence’.
The sister in question—she doesn’t have a driving licence or passport (like 11m others in the UK).
She lives with her Mum, so her name isn’t on any bills.
She’s relatively newly self-employed, so hasn’t done a self-assessment yet, but all of her payslips are more than 3 months old.
She’s currently using her partner’s bank account, because she’s been locked out of her own and doesn’t have the ID to unlock it.
She doesn’t have her birth certificate It’s lost, and she doesn’t know the GRO index reference number she would need to order it.
1 in 6 adults in the UK have a literacy level “at or below Level 1”. Level 1 is equivalent to about 5-7 years old.
This means there are a considerable number of adults in the UK who are getting through the complex things you have to do in life, all while being unable to read books that are recommended for children in their second year of school.
My sister’s Mum didn’t have the privilege of a good education, and very much falls into this bracket. There’s no question that she loves her daughter immensely, but she can’t remember what was written by the registrar decades ago.
So, the result is that no one knows exactly what the spelling of my sister’s middle name is. We know what the name is, but we don’t know what spelling was used when her birth was registered. How many “r”s are in it? What about “l”s? Is it an “a” near the end, or is it an “e’”?
Without that knowledge, and that birth certificate, she can’t apply for a driving licence or a passport.
Why does it even matter how it was spelt?
What her family, friends and former colleagues know is that she is who she says she is.
And we’d all be happy to put our name to that.
There are so many things that make up my sister’s identity: her wit, her craftiness, her absolute tenacity and resilience, how absolutely terrible she is at karaoke.
She doesn’t even use her middle name. Why the hell does her ID need it anyway?
It doesn’t. Her first and last name is enough.
With VouchSafe, things like this don’t matter.