How to find my father with just a name?
This is a very commonly asked question. People have been given a name of their father, but they know very little about him. He may have left the area where he once lived. He may have returned to his home town within the UK, made a new move, remarried or emigrated. There may simply not be sufficient information from the family stories alone to pin down who he is.
We receive many such requests, from people of all ages who have only ever been told a tiny bit of information, and whose fathers may not be listed on their birth certificate.
What we ideally want to find is the father’s exact name and full date and place of birth. This is a tall ask, so fear not! Initially it would be helpful to know the father’s approximate age and some details of his close relatives or background (“had a younger sister Sue”, “lived with his parents near the pub”).
Sadly it’s not usually possible to mine 20th century records for a young man just passing through a busy built-up area. People move on so fast and often leave little trace of their time living and working in the area.
It depends very much on the circumstances whether the name will be correct.
Whilst we have been able to answer questions from ‘records alone’, there is a good case for taking a direct-to-consumer DNA test such as the one at AncestryDNA. You don’t need anyone else in the close family to have tested. The testing sites compare with all your distant cousins.
These distant cousins are called your ‘matches’ and are found in a great long list of names. From this list of matches we are able to reconstruct your family tree going back one or two generations.
Using the DNA results helps us conclude which families your birth father belonged to. It also avoids having to repeatedly questioning the same people! For example, we know one young man who has interviewed his grandparents multiple times while they try to recall the name of his late mother’s boyfriend, but to no avail.
We recommend keeping an open mind as to what information will come up from analysing the DNA matchlist. People find that learning who is in their DNA has given them answers and has helped not just confirm the family links but build a clearer picture of life in the past. Others found the unexpected, such as multiple half-siblings, unexpected connections or a lack of a biological link to expected family.
If the birth father has a very common name, you could be hampered in identifying the right person. But by doing the DNA you’ll usually be able to find who they are at birth and to build out the family tree of that individual. And then to find out what happened to them, and hopefully find something more about their life story.
In most cases we don’t recommend people make contact with distant relatives (in an attempt to mine them for information). We prefer identifying the father and thinking of the closest possible person who can assist with explaining more about their life. We recognise it’s important for people to know who their fathers are. In some circumstances, we’ve had people who have not been able to identify their birth mother because she has got a very common name. And DNA has been helpful with that.
Nonetheless, from the looking at the family network, we may be able to identify photographs of interest. And to consider next steps in terms of contact.