When contacting your local Register Office please bear in mind that the more accurate your information the more likely they will be able to help you. Some of this may later be proved to be inaccurate but it might help point you in the right direction Read a good basic guide to tracing your ancestors, either from your local library or bought from a bookshop Decide how you're going to collate the information you will amass, whether a manual system or using a computer program designed for the purpose. For whatever reason people re-create the truth on occasion, either deliberately or because they can't actually remember any different. A good example would be an illegitimate child registered at birth with the mother's surname but brought up by their mother and step-father and so used his surname, although no formal change of name or adoption ever took place. Nicknames by which a person is known may be different to their birth name.
People often use a middle name as a forename.
Due to the large number of illiterate people registering events the spelling of a name could be recorded differently. For various reasons families may have baptised several children at the same time. Therefore the date of baptism is just an indicator to the year of birth- the child could be anything from a few days old to a teenager. Sometimes the parents of a child may register it with one set of of forenames, such as Thomas William, but then have them baptised as something different, such as Archibald Henry. This would mean the birth register showing no record of the latter being born.