Ubgo. It could be a cheap foreign...

Ubgo. It could be a cheap foreign car. Or a brand of goat cheese. Or an anagram waiting to be unscrambled.

But a man’s name?

Yes. For 75 years, the name on a Torrance man’s birth certificate has been Ubgo. Ubgo Mondovano.

And he didn’t like it.

The name didn’t cause Mondovano as much anguish as it might have because he never used it, favoring, instead, Hugo Mantovani.

That’s the name his parents tried to give him on his birthday, April 8, 1913. But Alberto and Louisa Mantovani were recent immigrants from southern Italy, living in the alien world of New York City.

When Hugo was born in the Bronx, the doctor apparently thought the Mantovanis called the baby Ubgo. Ubgo Mondovano.

This innocent error has caused irritation throughout the years, Mantovani said. Like the time he applied for his first driver’s license and had to go to great lengths to prove that he was really Hugo Mantovani.

Few knew Mantovani’s little secret, but occasionally his real name would slip out. “I took a lot of ribbing,” Mantovani said.

Early in life, he dabbled at being an opera singer. Later he sold hospital supplies before settling into a career as an accountant. After World War II, he moved to Torrance.

His first wife died in 1986, and last month he married Venus, a 42-year-old Filipino woman.

Mantovani’s lawyer advised him to correct the old mistake to simplify her naturalization.

So on April 7, one day before his 75th birthday, he filed a petition in Torrance Superior Court to have his name changed to what it should have been all along--Hugo Victor Mantovani.

Such petitions are routinely granted, although Mantovani’s has not yet been considered.

When it is, he said: “Ubgo will be gone forever.”