My name is spelled wrong, and it's the second generation of people messing up the same name

Hey hi hello, so, my first name is Maddie. It's not short for Madison/Madeline/etc., it's just Maddie. It'll be my birthday in a few hours, which made me remember that right when I was born, my name was changed to have the wrong spelling. Figured I'd share.

Now, let's jump all the way back to 1876 and honor the OG, my (maternal) great great grandmother, Mattie Mozingo. Mattie eventually got married and had a bunch of kids, one being my great grandmother, Mary Afton. Mary Afton eventually got married and had a bunch of kids, the youngest one being my grandmother! She decided to name her after her mother, Mattie. How sweet! ...Actually, scratch that. No, literally, scratch the name out on the birth index by scribbling it out and change it to Martha. Nobody knows why they changed her name, but this was attempt #1 at naming someone after Mattie.

Well eventually Martha gets married and has two kids, one being my mother, Susan. Susan adored Mattie, she thought she was a badass. Specifically, there was a time when my mom was young and the two were out in the garden. Susan saw a snake, screamed in horror, and 99 year old Mattie instantly turned around and chopped the snakes head off with a gardening hoe. Susan basically saw her as her superhero and decided in that moment that if she ever had a daughter, she wanted to name her Mattie.

Time goes on, Susan grows up, and eventually marries my dad in 2000. My mom always told my dad that if she ever had a daughter, she wanted to name her Mattie. Here's the thing, before they got together, my mom was dating a guy named Matthew who she was with for 3 years and had just recently broken up with before they started dating. My mom didn't want to go on the first date with my dad because she was fresh out of that relationship and because of a grudge she had from 1978but that's a different story lmao. Sooo this was agreed on, everything was fine and dandy, and then it's time for me to pop out. Suddenly, my dad was like "omg wait you're naming her after Matthew!" So my mom's obviously like "??? HUH?" And basically it comes down to "Name her Maddie instead of Mattie so I know it's real" because...logic. idk. My dad was a literal genius, but you know how people say that people who are super intelligent can sometimes lack common sense? My dad was a damn rocket scientist, and here I am, name spelled wrong. 2nd generation of people who were failed attempts at being named Mattie. (I hold no resentment and love my dad so much pls don't dog on him in the comments. He was the best dad I ever could've asked for.)

But wait, there's more!

My dad sadly passed in 2005 a few days after my 5th birthday. Because of my age, I really didn't get to know him very well. Because of this, I've been basically nonstop researching him since June 2022. This has been an insanely bittersweet experience as I discover how incredible my dad was, hearing stories of him, learning about his accomplishments, etc. Well, let's talk genealogy for a minute. My dad was 50% Finnish, his dad being 100% Finnish. You might see where I'm going with this. One of the most common Finnish names is one that pops up on his side of the family quite a bit. So often that it's actually both of his great great grandfather's names! The name? Matti. MaTTi. WITH Ts.

(I should also add that he didn't get to know about that side of his family very much because his dad became a very closed off person after he served in 2 wars, and it's safe to assume it's from PTSD. My mom's parents and my dad's parents were neighbors from 1978-1999, my dad's dad passed in 1996. In the 18 years that my dad's dad lived there, my mom's parents never heard him speak. Not once. So, safe to assume he genuinely had no idea about the name, and neither did anyone else lmao.)

There was no reason to switch the Ts with Ds. Keeping the Ts would've been me having a family name from both my maternal and paternal side.

Now my name is spelled wrong for no reason. I guess you could say I'm kinda MAD about it. (Not really, I just saw an opportunity for a pun.)

(No, I'm not changing it because he had my name put on Mars. I am, however, going to laugh at this every time I think about it.) (I also just don't like the name, no matter the spelling. If I could've chosen my name, I would've taken my maternal great grandfather's. I didn't know him, but his name was Zollie and I've always just loved the name lmao.)

Thanks for reading this :)