Good morning!
I reached out to one (of many) archives in Romania for a birth record of my grandfather. On all of his documents (ship manifest, naturalization etc) his birthdate is listed as 15th of October. On the record from Romania his date of birth is listed as the 22nd of October. Any ideas? Could the date of birth that’s recorded be the date that his parents reported it and not his actual date of birth?

thank you!
rebecca Racer

He picked a day and stuck with it. His birth record apparently says the 22nd, and, if the record was made about the 22nd, it is right. His parents knew the date on the Jewish calendar, not the Christian one.

"I reached out to one (of many) archives in Romania for a birth record of my grandfather. On all of his documents (ship manifest, naturalization etc) his birthdate is listed as 15th of October. On the record from Romania his date of birth is listed as the 22nd of October. Any ideas? Could the date of birth that’s recorded be the date that his parents reported it and not his actual date of birth?"

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

Another explanation:

Boys names are often not known by anyone but their parents and not mentioned until they've been circumcised. An important part of that ceremony is the announcement (my translation)  "And his name in the People in Israel shall henceforth be ---- "

The 22nd is seven days, after the 15th i.e. the day of his Bris - the day he received his name, and it was in public.    So yes, it could the day his birth (name included) was reported - or registered and not the day on which the infant was born.

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Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.

I agree with the comments of Sally and Odeda, but would add the fact that ...  Romania changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1919 (much later than most Western countries), with 31 March 1919 being followed by 14 April 1919. So there was a 13-day difference at the time of that change. Greece was the last country to adopt the Gregorian calendar ... in 1922.

Izzy
Israel A. Cohen
cohen.izzy@...

Few notes:
1) Romania adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1919. There are 12-13 days difference from the Julian used.
2) The date in the  birth ledger is the date when the entry was made by the Civil Office clerk. Usually that is 1-2 days from the DOB but that day is always mentioned. Unless you have a picture of the actual record, it is unclear what the Archive transcript has provided.
3) A discrepancy of the size mentioned is very small.   In most cases  (thousands) I have seen, the date, and even the year in the US records does not match the actual DOB.

Luc Radu
Great Neck, NY

My maternal grandfather was born in what is now Belarus and did not know his birth date, just that it was during Passover, so his children "gave" him a birthday, April 15.  

My father's birth certificate says he was born in NYC on March 30, 1917, but we always celebrated his birthday on March 29, because "my mother said that's the day I was born."

While the notion that that October 22 was the date of the bris and well might be the correct answer in this case, as my family history shows, there are many reasons that exact birth dates are not known.
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Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC

Ha!  Birth dates are a fun topic.  People really didn't pay attention to those things especially in the old country.  Even in the US they can be iffy.

A couple of examples:  My gm was born in Warsaw, but she never really new her actual birthday.  Somehow in the early 1960s one of her brothers got the date from Warsaw (I wish I knew how).

My father's New York City birth certificate has a "wrong" first name (as does my mother's) and a birth date that he said he didn't use as a child.  The family celebrated it on a different day a few weeks earlier.  Our theory is that the later date was the day the midwife registered the birth. He used the certificate date as his official b-day and celebrated it then too. And to make things crazier, his father's Petition for Naturalization, which lists his family, has a birth date for my father that is a year later and his sister's year was several years too early. And my adult father was there when the petition was filled out. 

Unless there is a burning reason to have certainty for a birth date, I wouldn't get to worked up about the actual date.  As long as you have the right person, be satisfied.

Jessica Schein
NYC