How To Find An Old Friend By Maiden Name

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How to find an old friend by maiden name is something that many people want to do. Regarding that, there are many ways we can help you. I’ll tell you about our service but also show you an alternative way to find the person you are looking for.

So in this article we’ll look at what you can do to find your own lost friend, even if you only have her maiden name.

The article is written by our Head Researcher David Oates.

The correct way to find an old friend using their maiden name

Firstly. If you are tracing anyone, is it is important to use the correct channels and methods to do so. We would never recommend just knocking on someone’s door. That can lead to problems and you might not get a warm welcome.

That initial response can be one of shock and come as a surprise. We want to make sure you feel confidence in your approach. Remember you only get one chance to make that first impression. So how you go about that initial contact is crucial.

There are companies offering an ethical trace and intermediary service to find an old friend. This will help to ensure you get the best possible outcome from your search.

It is absolutely possible to reconnect with people from your past but in our opinion, it must be done in the correct way.

When you are looking for an old friend but only remember their maiden name it usually means you haven’t had contact with them for many years.

In our experience this means they something like a work colleague or university friend or a romantic interest at some time. That’s no problem and you are not alone. This is one of our most common searches.

We have many clients who choose to find an old friend from many years ago, so you are in good company. It is usually a positive experience and can lead to rekindled friendships and contact.

I’d like to talk about our service and how our team can find your old friend for you, even if you only have their maiden name. I also want you give you some value, so I’ll talk about how we go about these searches but give you some hints and tips to help your own search to find your old friend.

If you’d like us to do the work for you then please get in touch. You can learn more about our professional service by clicking there.

We provide a no obligation quote for our work.

How to find an old friend by maiden name – What information do you need?

An old book with some information wrote on it with a phone. To show How to find an old friend by maiden name.

How to find an old friend by maiden name.

There is some basic information that you will need to be able to find your friend. Don’t worry if you don’t have it though, we can find old friends with only snippets of information.

If you don’t have the information below it will make the search more challenging but certainly not impossible.

Here is the basic information,

  1. Their full name at the time when you knew them – Their maiden name.
  2. Their age at that time – it doesn’t need to be an exact date of birth.
  3. The date you knew them – even the year is helpful.
  4. What they were doing at the time you knew them – Student, work, hobbies etc.
  5. Where were they from/born – this could be a country or a town.

These five pieces of information are really useful when you want to know how to find an old friend by maiden name.

But as I said if you do not know them don’t panic. There are ways to find old friends without these key pieces of information.

How to find an old friend by maiden name – example

Let’s populate that information with some fictitious details so we can create some scenarios to help you. The person below does not exist and any likeness to anyone is coincidental.

  1. Their name – Anne Mary Robinson
  2. Their age at that time – 19
  3. The date you knew them – 1978
  4. What they were doing at the time – At university in Leeds
  5. Where were they from/born – Don’t know but had a southern accent.

OK, so we have some example information of a fictitious person, and this is how we can use it to start to build a picture of your friend and where they are now.

So, we know that they were in Leeds but not from Leeds. Looks like they were from down south.

Using birth records to find an old friend

To us northerners that’s anywhere below Nottingham so that doesn’t instantly help. What we do have is a full name. We can presume this was her name in 1978 and her name at birth in 1959ish. Again, we can presume, and we can be wrong but we’re looking for a starting point.

Now we can take this information and we can look at birth records and see if we can get a match. Because the name is so popular there could be several matches, but it could help us narrow the search down to Leeds and only 1 or 2 more areas.

Let’s say there were 5 births in 1959 and 1960 for Anne Mary Robinson. Let’s assume that 2 were above Nottingham and 3 were below. They were in Croydon, Brighton, and Exeter.

Using marriage records to find an old friend

What we would have now is a list of potential marriage locations. Did Anne Mary Robinson stay in Leeds and marry there? Or did she head back home. Of course, it is possible that she did neither of those things and for our research team that wouldn’t be a problem. These are just ideas to help you. Strands of enquiry to follow and see if you get any matches.

Now you can search for marriages in the 4 locations that we have identified. We can look for Anne Mary Robinson and we can see if there were any marriages in those areas that were after 1978 (when our fictional client last saw our fictional subject). This will, in about 50% of searches give you a match for a marriage.

We would be liaising with our client and trying to build the story up. We’d see if any of the information we had found had jogged a memory.

This is a good way to be able to find an old friend when you only have their maiden name.

You would need to perform several checks to make sure that you had the right person. These would just be lines of enquiry to follow up on.

There are other things to consider, questions that our research team would look to answer.

  1. Is there an obvious birth record?

If there is, then we would buy it. This would tell us her parents names. We would have an exact birthdate to work towards and we would be able to establish other siblings.

  1. Is there a second or third marriage?

It’s possible that she married more than once.

  1. Did she ever marry?

Again, something we would need to consider.

  1. Will contact be welcome.

Safeguarding and finding lost friends

As a company that is built on an ethical approach to tracing, we offer an intermediary service as part of our client work. This ensures we can protect and safeguard our client and the friend they are looking for.

By working in this way, we get the best outcomes for our clients. The friends we find are much more open to a positive connection when they can see the care that our clients have gone to.

If you decide to trace an old friend, we will strongly recommend the use of an intermediary.

It gives your friend good options on what to do and if it is not the right time for them, it will be hugely appreciated that an intermediary has been used.

How to find an old friend by maiden name – Some suggestions

As you can see when you are looking for an old friend and you only have their maiden name there is a lot to think about.

These suggestions are just ideas and ways of working that we have found to be most successful. In our 14 years of trading, we have reunited well over 5,000 friends across the UK and beyond.

If you would like to know more about our find old friends services and how they could help you, please get in touch.

You can schedule a call to speak with us at a time that works best for you below.

If you have any further questions about how to find an old friend by maiden name, then please let us know.

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