Frequently asked questions

Why aren’t the births from 1903, 1904 etc. yet available, while they no longer fall under the Privacy Rules?

The death certificates of the Register Offices become public after 50 years, the marriage certificates after 75 years, and the birth certificates after a 100 years. The registers, however, are made public in blocks of 10 years. In other words: the births from the period 1903-1912 only become available in 2013, etc.

The deaths from the period 1943-1952 are public, but haven’t been made available yet. That is because of a question of priorities. Additions to marriages regarding names of parents has been given preference. Furthermore, the input of the data is done by volunteers, and their attention is divided over several other large projects, like the input of data from archives of solicitors.

This means that the following certificates are public;
- birth certificates before 1903
- marriage certificates before 1932
- death certificates before 1953

Punctuation marks regarding ij or y?

Originaly the letter ‘ij’ was pronounced as ‘ee’(in Dutch ‘ie’) in large parts of the Netherlands. Nowadays it sounds like ‘i‘. But actually, this is the other way around. The ‘ij’ was used well into the nineteenth century to indicate the sound of ‘ee’.

The spelling of most Dutch words has in the course of time been adjusted to the pronunciation. There are some exceptions; the word ‘bijzonder’ is (still) pronounced as ‘beezonder’. In personal names the chance fossilized spelling is much bigger, as they are not subject to adjusted rules in spelling, and are often copied older official sources like registers of birth.

This phenomenon is also apparent in place names like Wijckel in Gaasterland and Wijchen near Nijmegen. Nearly all personal names (Christian names and surnames) including a ‘ij’ know a variant with an ‘ie’, e.g. Sijbinga and Siebinga.

The described shift of sound can cause confusion in the right pronunciation and spelling of personal names. Some people wrongly pronounce ‘Sijtsma’ as ‘Sitesma’. Others skip punctuation marks and write Sytsma, Wybenga, etc. In our database names with a ‘ij’ are often written with a ‘y’ to restrict the number of variants. This says nothing about the spelling in the original certificate. Please regard this point during your search.

Which date is conclusive in a separation of marriage?

With an annulment of marriage the official date is the date of registration of the divorce decree in the register of  marriages and divorces. This registration had to take place within six months of the court order. In other words: if a divorce decree wasn’t registrated in the register of  marriages and divorces within six months after the court order, that court order was not validated and the marriage was not annulled!

My search leads me to the wrong certificate.

This can happen when the certificates are spread over more than one page, when the numbering of certificates has been started anew (e.g. in supplement registers), or when no numbering of certificates was ever present and the reference from the index concerns page numbers (Bnumber). It is difficult to then find the relation between the index data and the digitalised certificates. In those cases, the problem can be solved by leafing through the register. The registers were (obviously) formed chronologically. With the use of the date of registration (in birth and death certificates) or date of marriage the right certificate can be found quickly.