Typo gave me a bad name: lawsuit

A Queens man whose last name is misspelled on his birth certificate says he’s in a bureaucratic Catch-22 — which city workers won’t fix unless he brings his parents back from the dead.

Irving Maye, 60, hopes a state Supreme Court judge will take a more realistic approach to his problem.

Maye twice tried to obtain his birth certificate from the city Health Department’s Bureau of Vital Sta- tistics. Each time, he paid a $15 fee and presented a work ID and a utility bill.

Trouble is, the surname he has used his entire life doesn’t match the birth certificate, which has his last name as “Mayes.”

The errant “s” — added to his name six decades ago by a clerical worker — is causing him no end of trouble.

In his lawsuit, Maye says bureaucrats won’t fix the mistake unless he can either “produce his deceased parents to explain that they wished him to have the same name as theirs . . . or else petition the court to have his name changed, for which he would need a copy of the birth certificate that the Bureau of Vital Records refuses to provide him.”

The church worker’s Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit seeks to redress “an obvious clerical error.”

“There is no reason why he would be named something different from his parents,” the suit says.

“During the 60 years of his life, he has used, and been known as, ‘Irving Maye,’ ” it blasts. “He attended school by that name. His sister has the last name Maye. His daughter has the last name Maye. He registered for the draft with the last name of Maye. His Social Security registration is in the name of Maye.”