Genealogy Chat

Have you tried looking for naturalisation papers? They are at Kew and I don't believe they are online as late as the date you need. Technically they are closed but you can apply to have access - but I don't know if you'll get them. If there are two names on the death cert, one is probably his everyday name, the other probably what the informant thought was his official name. The chances are that his wedding cert. has the right name on it, as he himself gave it, and nobody ever registers their own death.

He has a spare W on the wedding cert? Maybe he chose to anglicise his name and decided Valdis and Walter were phonetically similar. (I don't know if the names are actually related.) People haven't always been fussy about the sequence of their names; so the Valdis/Walter could be before or after Waldeman/Valderman. Christine

It's hard to know what to make of it, when you don't know what happened in his past. Mind you, my father-in-law, who is from Spain, has recently discovered his forenames at birth were not what he thought they were. He is 88 years of age, so you are never too old to learn something new!! At least you are lucky enough to know that the death and marriage cert DO belong to the same person! Sarah

My grandfather, who came over from Sweden after the 2nd world war, has Waldeman W.Krilous on his marriage cert. Yet on his death cert it says Valdis Valderman Krilous AND Walter Valderman Krilous. I accept Waldeman was pronounced with a V, so the registrar may have spelt it wrong, but my grandfather appears to have 3 first names! Also his wife and kids/grandkids etc all have Krilovs as a surname, not Krilous. He's been dead since 1981 and my grandmother refuses to talk about his past. He wouldnt discuss his parents/siblings either, when he was alive. What can I make of all this?