Grandmother with two names??

[LizzieL]

I have a baptism - or rather a multiple baptism of five children between 10 and a few months - where the clerk has listed the children's names correctly in descending order of age, but has muddled up the birth dates - all the dates are correct but assigned to wrong child.
I think some clerks recorded things on scraps of paper and wrote up the register at a later date. I don't know how it works in South Africa, but in churches in Britain, the registers were kept locked up and with two or maybe three keyholders, so not the sort of book you could get at easily every day. Judging by the continuity of the writing I have seen in some registers, I would think a couple of months of records might be written up at one go. 

[3sillydogs]

I suppose anything is possible, it's just that there is no one with those names on that page.

Those names appear as names of a witness to her marriage, I think may be her mother. I don't suppose her parents approved of the marriage, her father was not one of the witnesses, it was a female member, and given that she was an "Boer" woman marrying an English soldier just a few years past the AngloBoer War, I have been pondering this and wondered if perhaps she, at the time thought she could mend fences by naming the child for a family member and then when it didn't work reverted back to her registered name.

It's just another twist/odd thing that will probably never be explained and can be added to a long list of oddities that make up this tree of mine

[LizzieL]

So looking at the records
The parents register the child as Evelyn because that's the name they have chosen. Registration would be a private event between registrar and mother and/or father, so none of Cornelia's family would know what the baby's name was.
Baptism would be public with family (I presume only Cornelia's family as it was happening in SA) and friends. Perhaps there was family pressure to give the child some of mum's names and James and Cornelia agreed, not thinking baptism was too important.

[3sillydogs]

I had considered that, and I think that is possible the most logical explanation. I don't know if any of the folk listed as present were family that would take looking into and it might or might not offer an explanation.

Nothing would surprise me with this particular branch, but it has made them very enteratining to research

[StanleysChesterton]

They were fluid with official names in the past. Not recognising that official names might be important.

My G-gm was born and named with her mother's lover's first wife's name (possibly, or coincidence) and a middle name.
By the time she'd married she'd dropped the (bizarre) first name, as had her sister (similarly baptised with a bizarre biblical-style name that was dropped).

When they buried my G-gm she'd additionally thrown in her own mother's name as her own middle name.

You really need to have an understanding of everybody in the family, extended family, or even neighbours to make sense of some of what some of them got up to.  And, above all, a confidence that you are right.

[3sillydogs]

She always used the name she was given, don't think anyone even knew she had the other names. Might be worth a dig though this branch has proved to be very very interesting

[wivenhoe]

What do you see for other children born to James Arthur and Cornelia Johanna.....names at birth and names at baptism.....same or different?

It might be that names at baptism were considered to be additional to birth names.......honouring names of family members........and quite separate from names recorded at birth and used during life?

[3sillydogs]

She was the only recorded birth that I can find for these two.  I have an idea they separated shortly after.  Can't find divorce for them though but she remarried in 1929