Yes my great grandfather was the Hugo Tillman from the 1911 census record you sent me. In the 1901 UK census there was a Hugo Tillmann (with the original German spelling of Tillmann) of the exact same age and he lists his bithplace a "Coblenz"- I am almost certain this is an entry by my grandfather. From my research it appears that Tillmann is quite common around the western side of Germany, especially around the Rhineland Pflanz state.
I am thinking that this entry could be my great grandfather's christening:
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:ND1P-RJ2
Everything matches, the year, location and the names (except for the D rather than T). The religion also matches because my grandfather was a Catholic so I suspect that his father might have been also a Catholic. The only anomaly is the "Mat.", on all the UK records my great grandfather used Hugo Joseph Tillman or just Hugo Tillman, never Mat.
Yes the whole D and T thing seems to be quite common with German ancestors. As a funny little side story, English was the second language of my late mother because she was from the Philippines, when she used to sign up for things at stores she would say "Tillman" but the storeperson would often write her surname down as "Dillman". When I was a young child I still remember being in a department store and my mother telling the storeperson "my name is Tillman, T not D". My father used to make fun of her over over this when he saw a letter or something with Dillman on it and he would always say "the name is Tillman not Dillman!". It looks like my mother might be getting the last laugh given that our original Germanic ancestors used D and T interchangeably!
After seeing this confusion first hand my mother's experience I could understand how newly arrived German immigrants with think accents could have their names recorded incorrectly by record holders.
Name You Are Researching Tillmann Dillmann Tillman Dillman
