Friday, November 02, 2007

Turns out my name isnt "Benito"

I just got my birth certificate in the mail and it turns out my name isnt "Benito" like i was led to believe my entire life.

Ok, so first, why I am just NOW seeing my birth certificate.

See, the wonderful company that I work for has started bringing me along to their highly exclusive "Diamond Club" trips in order to provide multimedia and photography services. This actually works out pretty good for me since the locations are chosen for their tourist appeal. The idea is to pamper those in attendance.

This time we're heading to the Bahamas. I've never been before so i did some reading and it turns out that in order to get back in the country you need either a) a passport or b) a birth certificate + gov't issued ID.

I waited too long to get my passport (I blame today's culture of instant communication and printable insurance cards) so i had to call up mom to get a copy of the birth certificate. She is wonderful. She obtained a copy of it, got it notarized and overnighted it to me.

This is what I saw when i opened it:

So there you have it. Benita. That's me.

For the uninitiated, my entire name should be "Juan Benito Mora Segovia Patoine". From the copy you can see that they tried to fix their first attempt by re-spelling "Juan" and adding "Segovia". Incredibly they got it all right except my first name. There was only one clue available...


The Good News

I will admit that i've always had a sad feeling that I would go through life and never experience the fun administrative things you can do with yourself legally. One of these experiences is legally changing my name. In that light, what a fortunate error i've stumbled upon!

So, instead of trying to get this "corrected" i'm just going to file for a legal name change!