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It is possible that he had a short certificate from his original birth registration which would name him as Harold Arthur Forrest KOSELJ and he would simply tell whoever he presented it to that he was only known by the first three names.  He would be quite entitled to do that as a personal preference as long as he wasn't doing it to commit fraud.   This short certificate would not have parents' names on it though.

In another scenario, if they attempted to have a search done for an original birth registration but were unable to locate it, you would expect to see a late registration in the indexes in order for a birth certificate to be issued. There doesn't seem to be one.

Are you sure it was a birth certificate and not a certificate of baptism?

Debra 

And no, he definitely never heard of the name koselj. He was shaken to the core to be told he was probably adopted by someone over the phone while he was searching for a replacement birth certificate. He spent years searching for his true identity and never found out who he was. The only document that names him as Koselj is the divorce court file from Eleanor's first marriage which someone on the other thread discovered. So he definitely didn't casually drop the Koselj part.

OK thanks for clarifying that. I suppose there's a chance that it was a baptism certificate or done other form of document that he had,  but my Mother swears she saw it at one point and it was most definitely a birth certificate. My Father said that my Grandfather used his army records to obtain a passport, so he may never have really needed it for official purposes until the whole insurance issue came up and the certificate ended up lost. I'm running out of places to look now. If DNA doesn't show me anything, I might have to accept that I've discovered all I can.

No, another woman was the birth mother. Elsie Koselj, born Louise Koselj. It may well be a dead end now but I am just looking for some link between the Koselj's and the Forrests. Why did my great grandparents (as we knew them) take in Harold Forrest Koselj? Were they paid.

I had thought that Ivan was off in America but he marries Elsie in England in 1918 and I paid for Audrey's birth certificate today ( Harold Jr's birth sister recently discovered by amazing folk on this thread) and it shows Ivan re-registering Audrey's birth with his details after the were formally married. I haven't got a copy of the 1917 certificate to see what exactly has been amended but the wording on the 1919 certificate indicates that they are NOW married so I am inferring that he wasn't on the original.

So Ivan registered Audrey's birth again in Feb 1919, 4 months before Harold Jr was born. It seems unlikely that he had no idea of the birth if my grandfather.

Yes that date is eluding me and causing headaches! No idea when he could have been adopted. I am guessing post 1928 because there is a court file in 1928 pertaining to his mother's first marriage which cites his birth name, hence how I discovered his original birth identity.

I've searched the adoption indexes for 30 year span and found nothing.

I'm wondering if anyone knows whether birth certificates were fraudulently copied in the 1920s? I've discovered my grandfather's original birth certificate at the GRO but his birth parents are not the people he knew to be his parents. Now he had no idea of this original certificate and for his whole life used a birth certificate with his adoptive parents' details. I've searched the adoption microfiche myself and also paid the GRO to do a thorough search but my grandfather appears to have no adoption record. Now he was born in 1919, so given that adoption wasn't legally a practice until 1926, it's not surprising to me that he isn't on the adoption register but I simply cannot get my head around the fact that he had and used a birth certificate to obtain a passport and numerous other things throughout his life but this certificate appears to never have existed! I'm baffled now and starting to wonder if it could have been a fake. The only thing that tells me it wasn't, is because he said it had an A in the top corner and after his birth certificate was lost in the post, he was informed by someone trying to help him get a copy, that an A meant he was adopted. How can he have never been adopted and yet have been issued with a usable birth certificate/adoption certificate? Someone help me, I'm going mad trying to trace this!