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 child’s names. If the baby’s name was changed, a diamond-shaped stamp will appear on the birth entry, with a reference to the Register of Corrected Entries (at the ScotlandsPeople Centre and website). Rarely, a birth will be registered before the child’s name has been chosen: these entries should be found at the end of the list of children registered under that surname.

 date and time of birth.

 address where the child was born.

 gender.

 father’s name.

 father’s occupation.

 mother’s name and maiden name.

 date of registration. Note that children were occasionally registered twice, especially if they were born some distance from home: this was technically incorrect but can be revealing, especially if the informants were different and gave subtly different information.

 informant’s name and relationship (if any) to the child. This will usually be a parent, but may be another close relation, or occasionally a non-relation, depending on circumstances.

The Edinburgh artist Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841) painted this depiction of The Bride at her Toilet on the Day of her Wedding, though not every woman would have had such a formal and elaborate wedding day, or have been able to afford the beautiful dresses shown in these old wedding photos.

It would be unwise to draw any inference from a non-relative being the informant.

 birth records for 1855 alone show parents’ ages and places of birth, the date and place of the parents’ marriage, the number and gender (but not names) of any children they had already, and whether any of their children had died. This extra information does not appear between 1856 and 1860. From 1861 onwards just the date and place of the parents’ marriage was restored to the records.

The importance of the additional information given in 1855 and to a lesser extent from 1861 onwards is immense. It provides valuable genealogical information on people who lived before 1855, and the marriage details can be linked to pre-1855 OPRs. In all cases where the couple came from somewhere else, the place of the marriage can be invaluable for working out where that was – whether in Scotland or abroad. Many Irish Famine immigrants arrived already married and had children in Scotland: a record of the latter will name the country and often the exact place of marriage back in Ireland.