General Chat

Dear Colleagues
Grateful for advice as to whether anyone has come across the following scenario in their family research. Has anyone come across a birth certificate where the individual has been given as {Unnamed} and then surname. Does anyone have an example whereby the child has then gone on to acquire a name through baptism records.
Normally when a child is marked as "unnamed" the child is sickly and not expected to live long (or maybe through religious reasons) , hence given the name unnamed. But has anyone come across a case where their ancestors where originally given as "unnamed" but then lived and then acquired a more formal forenames through local Church Baptism records. ??

Has anyone come across such a case before ?
Barry

What era?

It wasnt required that a name be given when registering a birth,,the law only required that the birth be registered ,,that applies even today,

what may have happened is a name was added at a later date and could even show up later as a registration,?

My Aunt was registered as Female in 1916 and was named a while afterwards perhaps at baptism and she lived well into old age

If you look at the index their are plenty of examples of Male and Female births registered in that way and not all are because the child was not expected to live,

Civil registration made Column 10 on a birth cert for the specific purpose of adding a forename given after initial registration

If a child was registered without a forename and was then baptised, or if a child was registered with forenames that were changed at baptism - because baptism was in place before civil registration and was considered more important - then the facility was given to change the first names (but NOT the surname). These days the baptism must take place within one year of the date of registration but the alteration can be made to the register at any time once the baptism has been completed.

often a child had a name changed by baptism but the civil registration was not corrected. That means that the name used by the child will not match the indexes

see http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/births.htm#COL10

Roy

My g/grandfather born in Liverpool in 1872 is registered as Male Simpson, he was baptised a few days after registration. He birth was never re-registered to add his name

He was disabled and I am assuming he was not expected to live. However, he did not die until 1949! And produced 7 children as well...

So yes it can happen.

Dear All

Many thanks for your contributions. The period we are talking is c. 1850s so civil registration in the UK was still relatively new and the traditions had not yet become as ingrained as they do now. I think given this branch of my family at the time perhaps baptisms were considered more important and thus the forename was never given for civil registration.
However it was interesting to note that this scenarios were not completely unusual, although no doubt it can make it more difficult for us budding genealogists...
regards
Barry

I have the birth certificate for the first born child of my 2x gt grandparents. He was registered as Male.

3 days later he was baptised and named Thomas after his father but unfortunately he died the following day. On his death he was registered as Male, not Thomas but it's definately the same baby.

Chris

Edit This was in 1872