Glossary

Word/phrase Other terms Comment
Ages at death D = day/days
H = hour/hours
M = month/months
N = mins/minutes
S = secs/seconds
W = week/weeks
Y = year/years
YA = years about
AKA Also known as.
BDM Abbreviation for Births, Deaths and Marriages
Certificate Cert An official document containing registered information about a person’s birth, death, marriage, civil union or name change. A certificate contain less information than a printout.
CKA Commonly known as.
District Keys Compiled books of the folio numbers relating to the places of registration.
Family name Surname;
Surname at birth;
Maiden Surname.
Family name recorded on the registrations.
Surname of a person prior to their first marriage.
Folio number Refers to the page number of an register
Folio numbers are recorded against each record on the microfiche. There can be multiple records with the same folio number in the same year.
Numbers usually started at the top of the North Island through to the bottom of the South Island.
Given names First names;
Christian names;
Names at birth.
Given names recorded on the registration.
Life Event Identification of which type of record is required e.g. birth, death, marriage or civil union.
Macron Māori macron A macron is used to create a long vowel in Māori words.
Māori registrations Separate registers kept from 1911 to 1961 of births, deaths and marriages for persons who were of full or part Māori blood.
Microfiche index BDM microfiche;
Fiche;
BDM Fiche.
Sheet of transparent plastic which contains usually 60 pages of BDM index information (e.g. name of person, folio number).
NR Not Recorded. The information wasn't collected or provided at the time. Or for pre 1875 records where the information was not entered into our database.
Ordinance A form of law issued by the colonial Governor of New Zealand before New Zealand’s Parliament had law-making powers.
Party Bride or Groom
Spouse
The other person involved in the marriage or civil union.
Printout A scanned image of the original record, however if a record has been updated or corrected it will be typed, as a correction cannot be made to a scanned image.
All records 1998 onwards will be typed as there is no scanned image.
Non-emailed printouts are produced on plain white paper.
Registrations-
Birth, Deaths and Marriages
BDM Registrations The paper based forms provided to BDM of life events for registration purposes.
Registration Number A unique number allocated to every registered birth, death, marriage or civil union within each life event type Format yyyy/nnnnnn. yyyy is the year of registration which is not necessarily the year of the event.
Registers Bound BDM Books;
Loose leaf sheets.
Books/sheets compiled yearly from the BDM registrations
Search (births, deaths, marriages or civil union) Search index;
Search folios;
Index search;
Indexes.
The type of life event being searched, to return a search result from the computer database.
Transliteration In this context, a translation of a Māori name of a person to an equivalent English name or vice versa.
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Photograph of old generation reading to young generation.