Vacation Journal
Friday, August 25, 2006
Can You Spell The Name of Your Town?
We're staying in Gardiner (with an "i"). It is named after someone with the last name of Gardner (without the "i"). Apparently a local citizen messed up the spelling when the town name was officially registered. As you leave the town of Gardiner (with the "i"), you follow the Gardner (without the "i") River into Yellowstone National Park for several miles. Apparently the National Park Service can spell better than the citizens of Gardiner. The Gardner River runs into the Yellowstone River in the town of Gardiner. I wonder if any of the tourists actually notice the difference in the names?
This reminds me of the story of Casper, Wyoming and Fort Caspar. Casper was named after Fort Caspar. However, the representative of the City of Casper who went to the territorial capital to register the name didn't know the correct way to spell it, so the city has an "e" in its name instead of a second "a". It was never corrected. You will find old Fort Caspar still on the outskirts of Casper. Check any map of Casper.
Apparently it is difficult to correct mistakes in government bureaucracies.
My wife's name is Charolette. When she was born, a birth certificate was filed by the attending physician who was substituting for a doctor who was out of town. When the regular doctor returned, he also filed a birth certificate. Both doctors misspelled Charolette's name in different ways. Charolette's mother had certified copies of both birth certificates. A few years after Charolette and I were married, we decided we needed to get her name straightened out. We contacted the State of Oklahoma as to what we needed to do. As it turns out, the state had already eliminated one of the birth certificates as being a duplicate. All we had to do was file a form with two supporting pieces of evidence as to how Charolette's name should be spelled. The two pieces of evidence we submitted were an affidavit from Charolette's mother stating what the correct spelling should be and a copy of our daughter's birth certificate showing her mother's name as Charolette. We got an amended birth certificate from the state with the correct spelling. So, why didn't Gardiner and Casper do the same thing?
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