The London 2012 Olympics are now exactly one year away, with the opening ceremony taking place on 27th July 2012. In celebration of this, we’ve had a look through our birth records and have found one British child born with the surname Olympics.

Michael Olympics was born – quite fittingly – in Athens, Greece. Athens was the host of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Michael Olympics' birth record - please click to see full page

Although he wasn’t born in the UK, Michael’s birth is listed because it was registered with the British Consul. The General Register Office index of British nationals born overseas 1818 – 2005 is available at findmypast.co.uk and can be searched at the same time as births registered in England and Wales 1837 - 2006.

Congratulations to Jack Henderson who correctly answered that Ethel M Dublin’s maiden name was Rowley. He’s now the owner of Ian Maxwell’s ‘Your Irish Ancestors’.

But if you haven’t won there’s no need to be overcome with jealousy! You can enter this month’s newsletter competition to win a DVD, ‘Tracing your Great War Ancestors’.

Manage your account settings if you would like to receive the newsletter and are not yet doing so.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the April newsletter competition prize, ‘Tracing Your Ancestors On The Internet’, is Rachel Andrews. We asked which registration district and county was film director Alfred Hitchcock born in. The answer is West Ham in Essex - well done for tracking him down, Rachel!

Do look out for our next competition which will appear in May’s newsletter.

Findmypast.co.uk has always had the most comprehensive England & Wales birth and marriage records – now we’ve added our exclusive additional records to create one simple search.

As well as England & Wales records, you can now search for your British ancestors’ births and marriages in our overseas, military and at sea records, some of which date back to 1761.

You won’t find a search this powerful including all these records anywhere else. It means that you can now find previously elusive births and marriages from a single search.

When you search for a birth record, one search will provide you with results from the following sets of records:

• England & Wales births 1837-2006
• British nationals born overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals born in the army 1761-2005
• British nationals born at sea 1854-1887

Below is an example of how your search results will look:

Note the wide variety of countries and places. Sort your results by country and place by clicking on each column heading.

We’ve given our marriage records the same treatment. Search once for your ancestors’ marriages in the following records:

• England & Wales marriages 1837-2005
• British nationals married overseas 1818-2005
• British nationals married in the army 1796-2005
• British nationals married at sea 1854-1908

We’re very close to completing our project to fully name index our death records. Once this is complete, we will combine all our death records into one search to finish the series.

Try our new search now to see how many ancestors you can find.

Our resident expert Stephen Rigden, pictured below, answers your queries.

From Helen Conway-Blake in Denmark:

‘I hope you can help. My husband’s mother was born around 1907. She died on 8 April 1951 and we have her death certificate, which says that she was 44 when she died.

Her name was Vera Nellie May Slater. When she died, she was married to William George Udall - they got married in 1939. Vera died at 31 Copse Hill, Wimbledon; we think this is a hospital. My husband was only 10 years old when she died and he never knew where she was buried.

Vera had two sisters. Peggy (probably Margaret) Slater and Sissy (we don’t know her real name). Sissy married a Lovegrove and they had a daughter. We don’t know if she is still alive.

We cannot find my husband’s mother’s family anywhere. We cannot find what town/city his mother was born in and can find nothing about her sisters or parents. If you can help us we would be most grateful.’

Stephen says:

‘Thanks for your enquiry. It’s hard to know what to suggest without knowing what you have tried already. The following suggestion is what I would do were I in your shoes, starting from scratch.

Firstly, if you do not have it already, you should purchase a copy of the 1939 marriage certificate. You can do this online at the General Register Office website. The statutory fee is £9.25 at present. The purpose of getting the marriage certificate is to a) find out Vera’s age at marriage in case this suggests a different year of birth to that calculated from the recorded age at death; b) find out the name of her father and his occupation; and c) see if any of the witnesses to the marriage are the known siblings or other family.

I have looked up the marriage entry in the marriage indexes on findmypast.co.uk and her name at marriage was Vera May Slater (without Nellie as a middle name). The only individual of this name of the right era in the birth indexes for England & Wales is one born in 1904 in West Ham registration district. This, however, may not be correct (the birth is earlier than you are expecting) and it is possible that she was born as plain Vera or plain May or even as ‘female’, i.e., unnamed at registration of birth. This is not unusual and is not simply synonymous with death in early infancy.

Once you have the certificate, and assuming that it names Vera’s father and confirms that she was born circa 1906/07 or otherwise before 1911, you should search the 1911 census of England & Wales. First, look for her in combination with her father using the advanced person search. If you cannot find her with him, then try looking for him alone using as base information a year of birth at least 16 years before Vera’s and his occupation as per the marriage certificate of Vera.

Should you find Vera on the 1911 census, which will give her place of birth, you can then search for her birth in the birth indexes for England & Wales (or elsewhere if the census suggests she was born outside England). From there you can proceed with systematic step-by-step research.

As mentioned above, I do not know what you have done to date. It is likely, however, that the negative outcome of all your searches suggests a perhaps less than straightforward family structure. Vera and her sisters may have been born under a different last name, for example, before their mother married a Mr Slater, i.e., he could be their step-father. This would be one possible explanation why you cannot find records under the name Slater. Or the two known sisters could be half-sisters with a different maiden last name. Or Mr Slater could have been the foster parent of the three girls. Or they could have been born in Scotland or elsewhere beyond England & Wales. So there are various permutations to consider. The best way forward in problematic cases like this will almost invariably be through the kind of methodical systematic approach sketched out earlier.’

If you’d like to send your question to our experts, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account. Unfortunately our experts only have time to answer a few queries each month. If yours wasn’t answered this time, you could be lucky next month!

Last night’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are saw actor Rupert Penry-Jones eager to learn more about his Indian heritage.

Rupert was born in 1970 and he is listed below in the fully indexed birth records on findmypast.co.uk:

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Rupert began his journey by speaking to his mother, Angela Thorne. Angela was born in 1939 in Karachi, India, which was part of British India. We found Angela in our overseas birth records, as shown below.

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For the first five years of her life, Angela’s father, William Thorne, was a doctor in the army. William commanded the 29th field ambulance unit as part of the Indian Army in World War Two. William died when Rupert was 12 and he wanted to learn more about his grandfather’s time in the Indian Army.

Rupert Penry-Jones (copyright Owen Benson)

William was posted to Italy from India and was involved in the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1943, one of World War Two’s most vicious battles. Rupert’s mother told him that William never talked about his experiences in the army, so Rupert travelled to Cassino to find out more.

Rupert met a soldier who served in the battle and paid tribute to how brave William’s medical unit was. William’s unit worked on the front line, treating over 1,500 casualties with no regard for their own safety. William stayed in Italy until 1945 and returned to India where he worked until 1971.

Still with no answer as to his Indian heritage, Rupert went on to investigate his great grandfather Theophilus Thorne. Rupert visited The British Library and discovered that Theophilus was a self made man who did well for himself, despite a humble upbringing.

Theophilus was born in Somerset and joined the army as a private when he was 18, leaving behind his job as a gardener. He arrived in India in 1881 when Queen Victoria was empress of India and the British Raj was at its height. At this time in India there were plenty of opportunities for young men to prosper. Theophilus quickly rose through the army ranks to become major and he looked after ceremonial and state camps. These camps were lavish places where India’s and Britain’s elite paid homage to each other. Rupert learnt that Theophilus was part of the 1911 Delhi Durbar, a mass assembly held in Delhi to commemorate the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India.

Theophilus’ army service record lists his marriage to Sarah Jane Todd in 1885 - here you can see them both on the General Register Office Index of Army Marriages in findmypast.co.uk’s armed forces marriages 1818-1994:

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Rupert discovered Sarah Jane’s baptismal record which showed her parents to be Thomas Todd and Louisa Johnstone. They got married in 1866 in South India when Louisa was just 15.

Louisa’s father, Thomas Johnstone, first went to India in 1842 where he was a sergeant in the Indian army.

Rupert travelled to India to find out once and for all if he had true Indian blood. He discovered that Thomas was stationed in Allahabad in 1857 during the uprising in India, when the Indians were rebelling against the British and their western culture. Thomas was 38 at the time and fought to calm and control the rebellion. At this time his wife Louisa and their children were in South India out of harm’s way. Rupert read some of the letters Thomas had written to Louisa which portrayed him as a loving husband and father. In 1857 Louisa received a letter from a commanding officer telling her Thomas had died after falling victim to cholera.

After tracing back six generations of his family in India, Rupert found out that Louisa’s parents were John Smith and Susannah (no surname). Rupert went to Nagpore to find out more about Susannah. Susannah’s baptism record shows her as an ‘Indo Britain’. Susannah’s and John Smith’s marriage record shows her surname as Collum.

Rupert then discovered that Susannah was baptised in June 1817 and the baptismal record showed her parents as Samuel and Elizabeth Collum. Elizabeth was born in 1816 but Rupert was unclear as to whether she was a native Indian or an Anglo-Indian.

Rupert successfully traced his mother’s line back eight generations, spanning two centuries, but never really achieved clarity around the origin of his Indian ancestry.

Last night, Monty Don became the latest celebrity to get the Who Do You Think You Are? treatment.

Monty Don (copyright jo-h)

The episode focused on two branches of his family tree, his maternal Hodge and paternal Keiller lines.

One of the ancestors focused on was Monty’s great-grandmother, Charlotte Augusta Hodge. The programme revealed that Charlotte was one of nine children born to the Reverend Charles Hodge and his wife, Ann. Charlotte was left behind in England when her parents and four of her elder brothers emigrated to New Zealand in the 1850s.

While taking a look at the large Hodge family in the all-new fully searchable birth records this morning, findmypast.co.uk has discovered that there was actually a tenth child – Charlotte’s twin. The image below shows the record of Charlotte Augusta Hodge’s birth in East Retford, Nottinghamshire in the July / August / September quarter of 1846. Nine lines below Charlotte is an entry for a Harriet Vere Hodge, born in the same district.

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The death index for the same quarter of 1846 reveals that Charlotte’s twin died soon after her birth. Reverend Charles and Ann Hodge’s youngest child was born four years after this tragedy and was also named Harriet, presumably in memory of the child they had lost.

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This fresh information may help Monty understand why his great-great-grandmother, Ann Hodge initially emigrated to New Zealand without her husband and family in 1850. It was speculated last night that this showed a wish to escape from her husband. However, we feel that Ann’s emotional state following the loss of one child and the recent birth of another must have played some considerable part in her actions.

Please do let us know what you thought of last night’s episode and what you think Ann’s motivations may have been for leaving her family in 1850.

Our expert Stephen Rigden, pictured right, answers your questions.

From Charlotte Paton in King’s Lynn, Norfolk:

‘I am trying to trace the family of Lilian (Lillian) Alexander who was murdered in Edingthorpe in April 1901, aged 8. She was born in 1892. She had a sister Alice who gave evidence at the trial of her murderer who was born in 1890. Dad was the ‘late’ Matthew Alexander on Lilian’s death certificate.

I can find nothing on any of the censuses about the family, who Mum was etc. Can you find them and explain why I can’t please?’

Steve says:

‘Many thanks for your question. I think the best way forward for you is actually the simplest - namely, to purchase the birth certificate of Lilian (which you can do online at the official government website). Her death was registered in June quarter 1901 in Smallburgh registration district; the death index gives her age as 8 years, as you say, which means that she would have been born circa 1892/93.

Checking the birth index, you can find her birth in 1892 in Smallburgh. The birth of her sister Alice is also there in 1890. The birth certificate of Lilian should confirm the names of her parents. Once you have the certificate, you could look confidently for the marriage of the parents (to get their respective ages at marriage), after which you can search for their births, his death and so on, as well as finding them on earlier census returns.

Of course, you could speculate that her father is the Matthew in the death index who died aged 54 years in September 1893 but it is always best to work systematically and from what you know to be correct and true, rather than guessing or gambling and taking a wrong step.

Smallburgh is a coastal registration district and one reason why you have not been able to find Matthew in the 1891 census is that he may have been at sea, for instance if he was a fisherman or a mariner.’

If you’d like to send your question to Steve, please register or opt to receive newsletters in My Account.

Following the launch of our fully indexed birth records last week, we’ve uncovered some interesting finds within the records:

• 10 babies named Fish Fish were born between 1840 and 1883, bizarrely, all in Lancashire. The list even includes one Fish Fish Fish born in Blackburn in 1864:

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• 340 Adolfs have been registered - with the last birth listed in the UK in 2005.
• Just five Ringos were registered in 1964 and 1965, compared with 2,414 Georges, 36,877 Johns and 56,170 Pauls.
• Six Dick Turpins were registered between 1854 and 1916 - a highwayman from the 1700s:

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• Four Maradonas were registered in 1986, the year of the infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal. Eight more were registered between 1999 and 2006, including two Diego Maradonas and two Ronaldo Maradonas.
• Eight Peles were registered between 1970 and 1972, following the footballer’s 1000th goal in 1969.
• Eight babies have been given the forename Hercules, with a further 51 bearing it as a middle name.

We also did some research into the birth patterns over the past century and found that the trend for births at certain times of the year has changed. In 1907 and 1908, the peak time of year for births was in quarter two during April, May and June, compared with 2007 and 2008 when July, August and September saw the most births. It’s possible that 21st century parents are more mindful of the school year than they were 100 years ago.

Search our fully indexed birth records today to see who you can find.

We’re very happy to announce that you can now search fully indexed birth records for 1837 to 2006 on findmypast.co.uk

Fully indexing the birth records involved rescanning 170 years of records and transcribing the quarter of a billion names within them. Over 1,000 people have worked on this two-year project.

These records are now the easiest to search complete birth records available anywhere online. The following are some of the benefits of the fully indexed birth records:

• Your search results will be in the form of a list of individual names, so you won’t have to check through pages of records to find your ancestors
• There is a complete 1837-2006 set of records
• The images of the index pages are completely new and very high quality
• We’ve added smart search features including name variants, and highlighting of unnamed children (very common in the Victorian period)
• There are clever search results to get around the quirks of the records, including the GRO’s procedure of initialising second names
• You can now search by mother’s and father’s name at the same time to help find those elusive births

If you haven’t had success finding an ancestor’s birth record previously, it’s definitely worth trying again using our fully indexed birth records - start searching them now.

Next on the list is a project to fully index the marriage and death records which we expect to complete by the end of the year.