Yes that can easily happen. Also when the authorities were first looking for ID of the couple that had met with this disastrous accident, they came up with the name JAMES BASSET and then later changed to JAMES BANNOT. It seems from the last newspaper report I have been able to find, they decided on JAMES BANNOT. Then we find out from the adoptions that ROBERT O BANNAT and HARRIET ANN ADELIA BANNAT were confirmed to be the actual names.
It is not easy to tell from hand written documents whether the surname was Bannat or Bannot as the 'a' and 'o' look very similar. But the fact that the oldest girl Grace at age 11, signed her paper BANNAT and she would have known that her name sounded like BANNAT rather than BANNOT. She also after her marriage broke up and/or she was divorced reverted to BANNAT except that she tended to add another 'T' making it BANNATT. This makes me all the more certain that they finally got it right when the adoptions were registered as BANNAT. I sure would like to find out the maiden surname of HARRIET ANN ADELIA and her family would probably like to know what happened to her. I only know that she was said to have been born in Ohio and I speculate probably born about 1865. It's harder to search maiden names but with HARRIET ANN ADELIA for given names, there shouldn't be that many of them, I think/hope.