Doctors Still Filing Birth Certificates Without Baby's Name, 1921

“Is the Baby Named?” from the April, 1921, issue of The Health Bulletin, published by the North Carolina State Board of Health

We find that a great many birth certificates come to the Bureau of Vital Statistics without the name of the child. Of course some supplemental reports with names of babies come in later but there are a vast number of birth certificates on file in the Vital Statistics Bureau with the name still missing.

It is impossible to figure out why people are so careless about the ONE thing that is most important to the child. For statistical purposes certificates without the name are just as good as the ones with the names, but for the individual they are almost worthless.

Suppose in years to come a person whose name does not appear on his birth certificate tries to prove his right to vote, or his right to inheritance? Here is what happens. He sends to the Bureau of Vital Statistics for a certified copy of his birth certificate. He writes that he was born on such a date, as ucha a place, giving the names of his parents. The Bureau filing clerk looks for the certificate and finds that the child on that date was born to those parents named in his request, but no name appears on the certificate. His parents are dead, the doctor or midwife who attended the birth is dead, the local registrar is also probably dead. He will have a tedious job proving that the birth certificate is for the party in question.

Putting the name on the certificate does away with all this trouble and both and makes an undisputed legal record of the birth, and gives the child a legal status that nothing else can give. We hope the people of North Carolina will awaken to the importance of naming the baby early and seeing that the name appears on the birth certificate before it is sent to the Bureau of Vital Statistics.

                --F.M.R.*

F.M. Register, M.D., was deputy state registrar of North Carolina Bureau of Vital Statistics