Glossary

Here is a list of terms and abbreviations used in British/Jewish genealogy.

Beth Din is the Court of the Chief Rabbi (in London).

BMD A quick way to write Births, Marriages and Deaths. Civil Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths came into force in 1837. There is an index to these events (see GRO Index).

Federation is short for the Federation of Synagogues.

FHS means Family History Society. These are local bodies who are really useful because they have often transcribed or indexed local resources such as censuses, parish records, MIs, etc.

FRC was the Family Records Centre This is now closed, records have moved to The National Archives

GRO stands for General Register Office originally called St Catherine's after the building where the records were housed. The GRO Index is an index of civil registrations, from July 1837. See Civil Registrations.

JC or The JC is Britain's largest Jewish weekly newspaper The Jewish Chronicle.

JW was the Jewish World newspaper(now part of the JC).

LMA is the London Metropolitan Archives and it holds many papers related to British Jewry (see our South East page).

ONS can mean One Name Study.

Office of National Statistics. Just to confuse you ONS also stands for the Office of National Statistics. These are the people who are in charge of the censuses and things like Birth, Marriage, Deaths and Adoptions.

PRO was the Public Records Office in Kew (Greater London). This is the place for naturalisation records, change of name records, military records and all manner of other bits and pieces. Now renamed the National Archives, see below.

TNA is the new name for what was the PRO at Kew (see above).

US is not the United States. It stands for United Synagogues.

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