Short answer. Not necessarily. A wrong or imperfect description does not automatically kill the gift. Article 789 directs that mistakes and omissions be corrected when the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence — though never from the testator's own oral statements. The aim is to save the gift by finding what he really meant.
What the law says
When there is an imperfect description, or when no person or property exactly answers the description, mistakes and omissions must be corrected, if the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence, excluding the oral declarations of the testator as to his intention
Civil Code, Article 789 — Curing Ambiguities. Read the full provision →
What the law says
the testator's intention is to be ascertained from the words of the will, taking into consideration the circumstances under which it was made
Civil Code, Article 789 — Curing Ambiguities. Read the full provision →
A faulty description is corrected, not fatal
The law does not throw out a gift just because the wording is wrong or clumsy. Article 789 says that when there is an imperfect description, or when no person or property exactly answers the description, mistakes and omissions must be corrected. So if the will names the wrong middle initial for a beneficiary, or misstates a property's boundaries or lot number, the response is to fix the error and give effect to what was intended — not to declare the gift void. The starting instinct of the law is to save the disposition by identifying the true person or property behind the flawed description.
How the mistake may be corrected
The correction is not a free-for-all. The article allows it only if the error appears from the context of the will or from extrinsic evidence, excluding the oral declarations of the testator as to his intention. That means you may look at the rest of the will, and at outside facts and circumstances, to work out what was meant. What you may never use is what the testator supposedly said out loud about his intentions. Those spoken declarations are shut out, because they are too easy to fabricate and impossible to test once the testator is gone.
Uncertainty on the face of the will
The second part of the article handles a different problem — when the will itself is unclear how a provision applies. In that case the testator's intention is to be ascertained from the words of the will, taking into consideration the circumstances under which it was made. Again, oral declarations of intention are excluded. So the interpreter reads the language the testator actually used, in light of the setting in which he wrote it, to resolve the doubt. The written words remain the anchor; the surrounding circumstances help explain them, but never the testator's after-the-fact spoken claims.
When correction is not possible
There is a limit. If neither the context of the will nor legitimate extrinsic evidence reveals who or what the testator meant, the error cannot simply be guessed away, and the gift may fail for genuine uncertainty. So a misdescription is a problem to be solved, not an automatic defeat — but it is solvable only if the true intent can be established from the permitted sources. The practical question in any dispute is whether the will and the surrounding circumstances point clearly enough to a single intended person or thing to allow the mistake to be corrected.