Genealogy Chat

When a child is adopted. Can the adopted parents change forenames or should they be retained. I fully understand the surname would change. Also would a nephew and niece on discovering they have an adopted uncle. Would they have any family rights to be provided with details of the new adopted child/uncles new name.

Adoptive parents CAN and most often DO change the forename of the child especially if the child is a baby when adopted. It is more likely that they will keep the original forename if the child is older and is used to their name.

I'm not sure what you mean about an adopted uncle - I don't think once an adoption has gone through that anyone can access the original details without going through an intermediary as they do on programmes like ITV's Long Lost Family.

Kath. x

Kath, Thank you I have discovered a child adopted, and his brothers family did not know of his existence. My contact would be the nephew to the child and very keen to continue to discover what happened to him. As the child resulted in a divorce which they knew of we have no idea when the child was adopted.

Is it likely that the Uncle is still living? They could register on this site in case he has as well

https://www.gov.uk/adoption-records/the-adoption-contact-register

There's further links on the page about hiring a research intermediary, for a fee.

Is his birth recorded on https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl ? They could leave a message with a generic email address in case his own descendants are researching his birth family.

Would you happen to know if he stayed with his birth mother? If she remarried, he might have been adopted by her new husband & taken his name.

If all names of an adopted child are changed is a registration re-recorded. Also would the birth certificate also state adopted penned on far left as original.

The child in question If adopted in same area in 1939 register would have 8 options else 323, and that's those that have passed away since the register was updated.

Thank you detective already passed on links. As the uncle would be in their 80s would be very surprised if they had registered but they may well have? The couple re-married each other. The time between divorce and re-marriage is going to be shared with me as the nephew has those details but it is between 7 to 9 years.

Reading the site the hiring a research intermediary is the way to go. But that's over to the nephew & his sister to decide.