Administration goes electronic.

[franceslievens]

I am now the proud owner of an electronic ID-card (short: e-ID).

Because the thing is the size of your average bank-card the Belgian administration has thought it wise to with-hold my fourth name. There goes my only piece of evidence that my parents christened me with more than two names and an initial.

Comments

[lijability.livejournal.com]

What is this world coming to!?


I had a first name on my birth certificate that my father changed to another name, then came my baptismal name, then my confirmation name. Usually I don't use my confirmation name. But you Belgians..... I had one immigrant ancestor from Belgium/France whose name didn't seem to want to end....

Camille Eugene Robert Oswald Englebert de Buisseret.

I doubt that would fit on your card either. He usually went by Eugene R. DeBuisseret, here in America. HIs wife wasn't much better...

Marie Catherine Josephe Pauline Boulanger

Odd though all I can get for her mother was Josephine Flemal. I guess that is what you get when you're born during the French occupation by the Napoleonic empire. Makes for things short and sweet in le Department du Dyle (what is now western Brabant).

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to tell you what the actual names are, but it's something like your "aunt" Marie. I've got my first name, the names of both my grandmothers, and the feminin version of my godfather's name. Most people only have two or three names, a lot only one. We don't commonly use the middle initials. Only administration does.

I'm quite the exception with three middle names, and I used to show my ID-card to prove it was true. Now I can't anymore. :-( I still have all the initials on my passport, though, but not the complete names.

[lijability.livejournal.com]

Marie... was my great-great grandmother, in point of fact. She was married to the DeBuisseret. I used to just go by my first name but then when the telephone indices came out on CD-ROM about a dozen or so years ago, I found out that there were other persons of my name (first and second)! They were women in Iowa. So I started adding in my middle more masculine name.

Dang.... this reminds me, I have to renew my driver's license... yuck.... I hate the DMV....