Everyone knows of people who don't go by the name on their birth certificate at all. Maybe it's as simple as turning their birth certificate name Karen into Caryn.
Maybe from the day they were brought home from the hospital everyone called the baby "Dinky" and it stuck, even though "Dinky" is really Angelica and 56 years old.
And then there is the fact that some people changed their names as simple as that; in the days before your social security number was really a citizenship enrollment number and you could be found through it and your credit you really could arrive in a new town, give yourself a new name, and start a new life.
When you're looking for genealogical records, it's important to know something about naming patterns by ethnicity, by family (once you have the chart together you may notice that a certain name has been passed from grandfather to grandson for generations), and through translation (so she was named Zsa Zsa Now she goes by Susan.)
Some Germans, for instance seem to have given their children up to 4 names, based on pattern, but then called the child by the second name.
In some families children are on census by their nicknames which seem to have no relationship to their birth names. In one family I researched the census taker assumed that a girl named Salley was really Sarah and listed her that way, which was incorrect. (The same census taker turned a girl named Toni into a boy named Anthony.)
Years ago someone who was stuck in their research could not find their Polish ancestor who they said was named Walenty in the New York census. The temptation is first to try various misspellings - or change the W to V (common), or to think maybe the man got called Wally. I found Walenty by researching to find that the English translation of this name is Valentine.
In colonial times a great many girls named Mary got called Polly. I have no idea why. I've just found it to be true many times. Patsy was really Martha...
So, if you can't find them by the name you expect, by all means try to find the name in translation, or by nickname!
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