Baby girl ends up sharing name with popular bakery product after blunder
A baby ended up with the name Pasty instead of Patsy after council staff spelt it wrong on her birth certificate.
Parents James Gallacher, 34, and Abbie, 29, wanted to name their daughter after her great-great-grandfather, Celtic football hero, Patsy Gallacher.
But, more than a year after she was born, they learnt that her name was officially down as Pasty.
It came to light after the moniker was included the annual list of unusual baby names, released by the National Records of Scotland’ and shared by The Scottish Sun.
Abbie told the newspaper: ‘I thought it must be a wind-up. But then I dug out the birth certificate and just thought. ‘Oh my God.’
‘We spent such a long time picking the name as a tribute and it feels like a slap in the face.’
The couple, who live in Clydebank, near Glasgow, welcomed their daughter in March 2023.
Abbie called West Dunbartonshire Council to register their baby as in person services had not fully reopened following the pandemic.
She said she ‘triple-checked’ the spelling with staff to make sure they got it right.
When she found out about the error she called the council again and after waiting some hours for a response, she finally received an apology.
Later that day a member of staff dropped off a new birth certificate along with a bunch of flowers to the family’s home.
‘But I don’t think they understand the upset they caused us,’ Abbie said. ‘What kind of little girl is called Pasty?
Footballer Patsy Gallacher was James’s mother’s grandfather, while Abbie’s grandmother Patricia was also called Patsy.
James said naming their baby Patsy seemed the perfect way to honour them both, but said the blunder ‘took the shine off a bit’.
However, he added that when he told his friends they couldn’t stop laughing.
A spokesman for West Dunbartonshire Council told the Metro: We contacted the family to apologise for the error when registering their daughter’s birth last year.
‘This has been corrected and the family have received a new birth certificate.’
Patsy Gallacher, real name Patrick, was an Irish footballer who played at Celtic between 1911 and 1925.
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