Tips on Searching the Civil Registration Indexes

Tips on Searching the Civil Registration Indexes

 * If you want to narrow your search by using the registration district, you must choose the option of "exact, close &amp; partial matches" otherwise this narrow search will not work.
 * If you don't know the registration district, then the search can be narrowed by using the county. The next section explains how to determine the registration district.
 * When you enter a place for your search, sometimes there are more than one spelling for the same place and you will get different results for a search on each place. If you enter a place and do not find the person, try a different spelling for the place.  For example, if you enter Leix, then the drop down window will give you other spellings for this county, i.e. Laois and Laoighis.  You may need to try all of these spellings for this county.
 * To search again, choose refine search. If you choose new search, you will return to the home page and have to go to the Ireland Civil Records search page again.
 * The search engine is not picking up all of the name variants. For example, if you search on Hanora, then you get a different set of results than if you searched on Honora.  Thus, you should manually try other name varriants if you do not find the person you are looking for.
 * Surnames beginning Mc may have been typed M' in the compilation of the GRO Ireland index. You may need to enter M' in the surname search field on FamilySearch Historical Records (formerly Record Search) to disclose all surname entries with a Mc prefix. Indexers have typed what they see in the GRO index literally. The GRO index originals are typed in this way!