What's in a name? My surname brings up some curious facts.
1 have been searching for my birth certificate from the 1960s and have been unable to find it until yesterday. It turns out that my surname was spelt like this De-La-Mare on my birth certificate. My father was a channel islander so it seemed pretty ordinary, rather like Smith on the mainland. I have tried so many variants to try to get hold of the birth certificate and was starting to think I didn't exist. Then I spoke to my brother who remembered using hyphens as a child. I did suddenly recall using them as a child too, upon that reminder, after all, it was a while back. I asked my mother whose memory was also jogged. She thought we stopped using them as computers became more mainstream. I was curious so asked ChatGPT, is that likely, did computers read the word differently? Now I get called Mare, de Lamare, delamare, delamar and allsorts by various machines. When I lived in Africa it was always de la Maré. ChatGPT said: That’s a fascinating discovery — and it actually fits quite ...