Change of name on birth certificate

[sandgrounder]

Hello, In the course of researching a family in Scotland in the '50s and '60s I've come across something I haven't encountered before where a birth cert shows two names. I'll put the details below. Because the name is very rare I'll just put initials for the surnames and change the first names of the child and parents.

It's quite a large family and I recognise all the children whose births are shown on ScotlandsPeople apart from the youngest one. I could find no trace of him anywhere other than this birth registration. So eventually I succumbed and ordered a copy of the certificate to see if he had the same parents as the other children and he did - up to point!

This shows the child's name as Henry M, but his parents are shown as Arthur G and Elizabeth G.  The informant who is shown as being present at the birth was the father and the child was registered three days after his birth in 1962.

You'll notice that the surname is different from that of his parents.  At the foot of the birth cert it says "formerly known as Henry G" i.e the same name as his parents together with an RCE number.

There was another child born a couple of years later in England and I'm pretty sure to a different father although she was registered with the G surname - and at some point the parents divorced.
Bearing this in mind it suggests to me that Henry was not the natural son of Arthur and so I can understand the "formerly known as" bit. It's the three days that I find a little strange.

My theory is that the child was registered very soon after his birth with the G surname but within 3 days of his birth the mother told her husband that the child wasn't actually his so he rushed off to the Registrar to change it.

I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this.

TIA

Judith

[GR2]

Perhaps you could email them and say you had ordered the certificate. When it arrived there was a reference to the Register of Corrected Entries, but they had not sent this with the certificate, would it be possible for them to send it now?

If it were an earlier certificate, available to see on-line, and there was a reference to an entry in the RCE, there is a link that allows you to see it at no extra cost, if you have paid to see the actual certificate.

The RCE might explain the reason for the change.

[sandgrounder]

Thank you, I'll do that.

[sandgrounder]

Reply by return almost!

The name change wasn't done shortly after the birth but by the child himself when he was an adult. The clue, had I known it, was in the RCE No which included 2006, but as I'd never encountered this before it was all a bit of a mystery.

[GR2]

That was quick. Oh well, a major law of genealogy is that one mystery cannot be solved without generating a second mystery.

[sandgrounder]

Absolutely!