Mother's Maiden Name on Births

[MaryA]

I've found the GRO site extremely useful for matching children to both parents, but it's a bit of a pain that you can only search male or female and +/- 2 years each side, bit restricted.

Findmypast has come along in leaps and bounds - you might need to log in to test this out but if you put in the surname you are searching for and also further down enter the Mother's Maiden Name - ignore the warning that this needs to be after 1911 - and see what results you get. You should then be able to narrow things down a bit further by location/registration district and hopefully come up with the offspring you are searching for.

[Bertieone]

Thanks for the heads up, Mary

Handy to know, though still very grateful the GRO added the maiden names, certainly saved many lots of time and money.

[MaryA]

still very grateful the GRO added the maiden names, certainly saved many lots of time and money.

Absolutely, it's been a godsend and still will be because of the number of names that are spelled incorrectly, since the Findmypast search doesn't actually show the maiden name you can't just scroll down a list and see similar spellings.

[AndyJ]

since it doesn't actually show the maiden name you can't just scroll down a list and see similar spellings.

Apologies if I have misunderstood what you mean here, but the results of GRO searches do display the mother's maiden name, and indeed you can get fuzzy matches too. I did a recent search where the MMN was Dye, and got back a list which included Dew, Day, Doe and Dewey results along with the Dyes. Sadly none matched who I was looking for. That particular branch of the family seem to have neglected to register the births of 7 of their 10 children. Fortunately they seem to have been better at getting them baptised (only 2 missing!). I do agree that the FMP facility is a useful alternative.

[MaryA]

Yes, maybe my explanation wasn't too clear, that's where the GRO search is more useful than the Findmypast search, I've amended above to clarify.