Whilst searching through the birth indexes at the Family Records Centre in London, a well known records agent was overheard saying to his trainee at the desk opposite him: "I've found it! - His birth was actually registered as Bartholomew Noel." The trainee, looking rather puzzled, replied: "That's odd! They must have pronounced it as Bartho omew."

One of my friends works in the customer service call centre of a national pager company. He deals with the usual complaints about poor pager operation, as well as the occasional crank caller demanding to be paged less often, more often, or by more interesting people.

The best call came from a man who repeatedly complained that he was being paged by "Lucille." He was instructed that he would have to call her and tell her to stop paging him.

"She never leaves a number, so I can't call her back," he said.

After three such calls, someone thought to ask how he knew it was Lucille if she didn't leave a number.

"She leaves her name," was the reply.

After establishing that the customer had a numeric-only pager, the light bulb came on. "How does she spell her name?" the service rep asked.

"L-O-W C-E-L-L" came the reply.

At a recent international convention, a British genealogist, desperate to determine the reason why so many well-known people have changed their surnames, asked the opinion of an eminent German 20th century historian.

The only explanation to be offered by the German was that the chant of "Heil Schickelgrubber" didn't somehow have quite the right ring to it.

My friend Nancy was Catholic, but her fiancé Chris was not. They were planning to marry in a Catholic Church, and at one prenuptial meeting there, the priest turned to Chris and told him that since he was not Catholic, they would have the ceremony without Eucharist.

Later that day, Chris was noticeably upset, so Nancy asked him what the matter was.