Has this been consistent all throughout Hawaii's existence as a state? I noticed they've changed their birth certificate designs quite a bit over the years. Perhaps they change the language sometimes? Thanks for the example.
Danae has posted both her short-form COLB and her long-form BC. The short-form COLB is a Certification, not Certificate, and it does say “Date Filed.”
WND wrote an article all about Danae’s documents with images of everything she’s posted here at FR.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=285921
This is the deal as it was explained to me by HDOH.
Hawaii is a number of Islands, each of which is a county. Now, the only place where a birth document gets its file number is in the main office in Honolulu. Until then there is no number associated with a record. When a record is received by an office other than the main on in Honolulu, it is noted as ACCEPTED by that office. There are offices on Oahu which are not the main office, and records are ACCEPTED there as well. When a document reaches the main office in Honolulu it is labeled as FILED, because it is given its file number and literally filed.
This difference in notation was important back in the old analog days, when all records were maintained by hand, and had to be physically moved from point A to point B. That took time and the offices had to have some means of noting that a document had reached an office and was in the proper chain of custody for that record.
Today this is not so important, because so much information gets transmitted digitally. Its much much faster now, and that interim transition period no longer exists in the same way.
The terms Accepted and Filed are not all that important today. But in 1961, as well as 1969 it meant this, a record was ACCEPTED by an office, but the record did not have its File number yet. Once the File number was attached, the document was noted as FILED. Remember we are talking about Hawaii here. They don’t worry too much about little details they consider irrelevant like changing accepted to filed. I am not kidding, they really can be just that laid back about things.
In many ways if a record was ACCEPTED at the main office in Honolulu, they would have either noted it as ACCEPTED or FILED, and in that office in particular, the two terms were used interchangeably.
I have gotten into it with posters in the past (not necessarily here) about these two terms. I am here to tell you, that this particular detail is not relevant, and is not referring to anything important. It may seem important to us, who are looking at every little detail. However, we are talking about Hawaii, and these folks didn’t always follow every rule to the letter, and furthermore they really don’t get why people would get their panties into a knot over it anyway. To them literally “it’s minah (minor), we go eat,”. In so many ways, Hawaiians really do not sweat the small stuff, and this is small stuff to that way of thinking.
I am not commenting one way or another on whether this is good or bad. I am not making a judgment about it. I am just telling what I know of Hawaii, and what I specifically learned in speaking to representatives of the HDOH on this matter specifically.