Question - marriage/birth certificates

[Julie Tyrell]

This may be a silly question. When registering a birth/marriage/death do you have to put all the names of the 'person' or witnesses.

For example: I have been trying to find the brith of Andrew Kirkland (details taken from marriage certificate) - when I eventually found it his full name was Andrew Reid Kirkland.

Is this a common practice to drop 'middle' names. As I am having diffultly tracking down other relatives and now wonder if their 'middle' names have been excluded from certificates.

[Geoffers]

This may be a silly question. When registering a birth/marriage/death do you have to put all the names of the 'person' or witnesses. For example: I have been trying to find the brith of Andrew Kirkland (details taken from marriage certificate) - when I eventually found it his full name was Andrew Reid Kirkland.
I believe you are supposed to give your full name - the Vicar where I got married was most insistent on recoding full names and signing full names. But I have found many 19th century marriage certificates where one or more names have been dropped; it isn't just the case of dropping a middle name either. As an example, one of my gt-gt-grandfathers was registered at birth as George Robert Gosden. In a census return he is plain George and when he married is just recorded as Robert. It would be a mistake to see a name on a marriage certificate or census return and assume that was the full name.

Geoffers