Was it common to celebrate a different day as your birthday?

JB5150 · Explorer Joined: Sep 13, 2007 Posts: 78 Location: Florida

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know if it used to be common to celebrate a day other than your actual birth as your birthday?

My great-grandfather's birth certificate lists his birthday as 9/28, but his death certificate lists it as 6/11. I know in some religions, people would celebrate their patron saint's day rather than their birthday, but I don't know if this is the case here or not. (My great grandfather was Salvatore, and the only St. Salvatore's day that I could find is in March).

Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks!!

nuccia

Believe it or not, thats not unusual.

Pay attention to his birth certificate..its a primary source and the info was given closer to the actual day. The death certificate info was given by someone who was more than likely guessing...its a secondary source. I would however, try and collect other documents just to keep things all together.

I have my great grandfathers certificates, census records, ww1 draft registration cards etc and none give the correct day of birth..they are all different. In the end, I got a record that he applied to the Italian comune to amend his birth act..seems like everything on it was wrong...including his parents names.

I'll have to post that..its very interesting.

Cathy · V.I.P. Joined: Jul 10, 2007 Posts: 2681

Yes, Nuccia is right. I have both my grandparents death certificates. Their eldest son provided the information on my grandmothers and the birthdate was incorrect. My uncle simply did not know the correct information. All American documents on my grandfather list different birth years for him. I started with 4 different years. None were correct. My grandfather, like most men back then lied about their ages.

charliemis

My Dad was born on April 27, 1903.....His birth was recorded on May 2nd and he used the dates interchangeably. This actually caused a few problems for me later in life when he passed away. For some reason, he argued that the date his birth was recorded was the official date of his birth since it was recorded then. I could never understand his logic, but I guess that he was taught that was the correct date.

Charlie

Cathy · V.I.P. Joined: Jul 10, 2007 Posts: 2681

My grandfather did the same thing. He was born on November 1 but in the just found army registration (in Italy) he listed his date of birth as November 11 - the date it was recorded in the town. Perhaps many of them did that. Of course my grandfather added to the confusion by using several different birth years in the U.S.

Poipu04

Same here: my ggf's death certificate, with information supplied by his oldest son, had the wrong date and wrong year. The only thing right was the month!