"Tabby" <tabby@large.it> wrote in message news:daj3eh$6la$1@reader01.news.esat.net... but are there other > circumstances > where this could happen? People change religions. Perhaps the parents were Catholics in all but name, and wanted the child officialized. Not that I've ever seen such a case. Date and location of your example might help. In Ireland, a lot of early-modern, protestant émigrés 'went native'. I myself am trying to use my received denomination as an indicator of how long my ancestors had been there, or whether they were native, and where they may have come from previously.