Gabrielle Mayor with her parents, mom Ellyn Mayor and dad Jess Mayor.Photo: Courtesy Gabrielle Mayor
Gabrielle Mayorwas so excited to get her learner’s permit when she was 15 years old. Much to her surprise, she ran into one unexpected problem: her name was technically Babrielle.
Mayor, now 24, tells PEOPLE that at the time, she had it all planned out. She wanted to get her learner’s permit on her actual birthday so she could get her license as soon as she turned 16. And everything seemed to be going according to plan, until she got to the DMV with her mother.
“They asked me a bunch of questions and they asked me for my social security number,” she recalls. Their response? “We don’t have a Gabrielle Mayor in the system.”
“Immediately I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, did I do something wrong?’ " she adds. “Then they go, ‘We do have a Babrielle though.’ "
Right away, she remembered thinking, “there must be a glitch on their end.” As it turned out, therehadbeen a kind of a glitch, it was just one that happened shortly after she was born.
And so, when she was 15 years old, she learned “there was a typo on my birth certificate and my social security card, and that my real name was Babrielle, with a B.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
After the initial shock wore off, and Mayor came to accept that she would not be getting her permit that day, a few more questions came to mind.
“My name’s Babrielle?” she asked at the time. “How did this never come up? And more importantly, how was this never fixed?”
RELATED VIDEO: Sports Reporter Makes His Feelings Very Clear When He’s Made to Cover Morning Weather During Blizzard
Mayor, who lives in New York City and works in advertising, went on to explain that her mother was already 10 days late when she was born — and feeling “extremely out of it” due to the medication she was on.
After giving birth, Mayor’s dad, who “was exhausted,” took a nap, so it was up to her mom to fill out the newborn’s paperwork, which Mayor says her mom “barely even remembers” doing.
“After the whole thing gets processed they get the birth certificate and it’s Babrielle and she was just like, ‘What the hell?” Mayor adds. “She had changed it on my birth certificate but totally forgot about the society security up until I got my permit.”
Gabrielle Mayor (right) with sister Samantha, dad Jess and mom Ellyn.Courtesy Gabrielle Mayor
The Babrielle issue ended up getting fixed in about two weeks, and now it’s just something the family can laugh about — especially now that the story hasgone viral on TikTok.
“I was very scared to tell them at first,” Mayor says of the popular post, which has been viewed over 4 million times as of Monday.
“I was honestly nervous because I don’t want to make it seem like I’m exposing them to the world for being bad parents when they’re obviously not,” she adds.
Luckily, they found it just as amusing as she does. “They were just cracking up,” she says. “They thought it was the funniest thing.”
And while Babrielle may not be her actual name anymore, she says that “everybody calls me Babs.”
“I wanted some standout name that nobody had,” she adds. “It’s just funny because this whole time I could have kept Babrielle and just been the most unique..”
source: people.com
