FindMyPast civil birth searches

[LizzieL]

It is also annoying that it doesn't filter out marriages where the possible brides and grooms are reversed.
Eg John Smith mother's maiden name Brown could be son of Tom Smith and Mary Brown but not the son of Tom Brown and Mary Smith (assuming parents were married to each other and birth indexed in conventional manner), but the search will find both marriages.

[BumbleB]

I'm not having any problems at all AND I find it very useful to see MMN as it saves me having to go to the GRO site to find the name.  In some instances there are also suggestions for "Other records featuring that name", which, again, I have found useful.

[Jebber]

It’s working fine for me. I see the OP is searching for births pre 1917,  if the search is not  throwing up results pre 1911, of course the mother’s maiden won’t show. 1911 to 1917 is only six years, one more year than the five year search in the GRO website.

 FindMyPast have never shown the mmn pre 1911, they only have the same information as free BMD.

[BumbleB]

Jebber - it seems to be a new feature, although not for all birth registrations.  This is one of my Archbell lot seen today!!

ADDED:  But if I look at Annie born in 1876 then FindMyPast do NOT have the MMN, but GRO have it as Metcalfe

[california dreamin]

As previously stated I have tried a couple of pre 1917 searches on FindMyPast and have been provided with the mmn   

[JenB]

Findmypast have been gradually adding the mother's maiden surname to pre-1911 civil birth records on their site since about 2019.
Prior to that they showed very few.
This gradual addition isthe reason why some searches come up showing the maiden surname and others don't.
See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=846415.msg7134752#msg7134752
and https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16778

 

[Jebber]

But they only appear do it from other sources, rathe like Ancestry with later deaths. For example, my husband’s death appeared on Ancestry before the GRO, they obtained it from the Probate Register.

[HughesRL]

FindMyPast has almost 100% of the post-1911 MMNs and perhaps 90% of the pre-1911 MMNs. I think they've used a bot to obtain the information from the GRO for pre-1911 births. The reason I think this is that FindMyPast shows the MMN as "-" if their transcript of the person's name, volume and page (and possibly district?) differs from the GRO's. Usually this is because FindMyPast's transcript of one of these fields is incorrect, but occasionally it is the GRO transcript that is incorrect. I think their bot has just been populating these fields on the GRO screen and extracting the MMN for the FindMyPast database.

As for the new link that FindMyPast have added to the maiden-name field, it's of very little use and it wastes real estate on the screen but it does not affect the presence of the MMN itself. If it is blank now then it was blank before the new feature appeared a couple of days ago.

[LizzieL]

The new feature can be useful if mother and father surnames are a rare combination. Saves a few key strokes.