Suggestions

Yes, that is all very true but we still don't know which birth places the op was referring to, so without being more specific it is difficult to proffer a solution.

Is it
Member trees
Census records
Parish records
BMD's

or something else.....?

I interpreted the original post as meaning
''why is my relative recorded as born Willtown when they were born in ( for instance) .Villetown

That would be a transcription error,

If it's ''Why was my ancestor recorded as born Lewes but recorded as Brighton''
That's because its what he said at the time.

If its ''why was my ancestor recorded as ''born Sussex'' and wasn't more specific

because he was miles away and didn't think anyone would have heard of Lewes

many other reasons too i guess.

Where were you born?
1 Hosp name, street, town ,county
2 street, town ,county
3 town ,county
4 just town
5 just county
6 The little village just outside the town that you went back to aged 2 days.

............All technically correct

7 The info that gives the best chance of you being identified. ? My neph was born whilst his parents were on holiday in Cornwall. He was brought home to Cambridgeshire as born as he was well enough. Technically he was born Cornwall, but how many would attach him as their family, knowing the family was exclusively from Cambridgeshire?

Going back to my earlier post I'm still not sure exactly what it is we are discussing here.

I'm sort of getting the impression that the complaint is about the default list GR have for you to select for a place name when adding or updating your tree.

Is that the case, or is there some other issue here?

I do not think that any form of standardisation in locations et., in the records would make any great difference when searching trees as it is often dependant on what a tree holder has put which may not necessarily be what is in the records.

...and now GR in their 'wisdom' have standardised everything using modern Unitary and District authorities which only came into being in the 1990s! Why oh why couldn't they just use the Town, County, Country database that they used with the nice old tree? (albeit that one was based on 1973 county reorganisation - and so didn't marry up with 19th century Census locations).

It would be helpful if we could understand a bit more as to what exactly the OP is referring to. Could we have some examples please?

Some examples of same birth place but not looking so

Much of SW and parts of SE London for many years was classified as Surrey
Other SE was Kent
And then you have Woolwich which depending on what location could be either side of the river as North Woolwich is on the north side of the river (east end of London just to confuse people even more!) and then Woolwich and Woolwich Arsenal are South of the river. I could go on!!!!

Also - in 1841 a person may have been born in a tiny hamlet of 3-10 houses - but by 1861 that was now part of the nearest village - by 1881 that village was now part of the local market town - by 1901 this was now part of the outskirts of the big town. So many will just adjust their birthplace to the 'current' location on each census, without actually moving from the original location.

There are a myriad of reasons for the differing place names.

or they might have the birth certificate, and take the description from there

Some people will have the place of birth taken from one census and that may vary between censuses for various reasons.

Others may take the birthplace from the registration district which is usually different to the actual village they were born in and may even be in a different county.

Because the birth places are entered by members themselves .............

.............. you will find the same thing happens on all sites that I have been on


No site can force anyone to enter the same geographical description.

Why do the birth places not match up. Some are so obscure and far away from your family member to be absolutely stupid. :-|