How to Find Your Birth Time: Certificates, Records and Family

← Back to Birth Charts

Start with the records closest to the birth itself: the full civil birth register entry, the hospital or midwife's notes, and anything your parents wrote down at the time. A remembered time is worth having too, but it is the weakest of the three. Where a time is recorded at all depends heavily on the country and the year you were born, so the first job is finding out what your local records normally contain.

This guide covers where to look and how much to trust what you find. If you come up empty, the chart still works without a time; what a chart can show without a birth time explains what stays and what goes.

Civil birth records

Birth certificates are the obvious place, and also the most variable.

England and Wales. A standard birth certificate normally has no time on it. The General Register Office's own guide to birth certificates notes that a time of birth may indicate a twin or triplet, which tells you how unusual a recorded time is there.

Scotland. The opposite. National Records of Scotland's guide to the statutory register of births says the time is recorded on all Scottish statutory birth entries, not only those of twins or multiple births. If you were born in Scotland, the register entry is the first thing to order.

United States. Practice varies by state, and some states issue more than one kind of certificate copy. If the copy you hold has no time, ask the state vital records office what the full record contains. The CDC keeps a directory of every state's office on its Where to Write for Vital Records page.

Elsewhere. Ask the civil registry the same question: does the full register entry include a time, and can you get a copy that shows it? A short-form or abstract certificate can leave out details the register holds.

Hospital and medical records

Delivery notes are usually where the time was first written, often by someone looking at a clock in the room. You can generally ask the hospital or health service for your own birth records, though how long they are kept differs between countries and institutions, and older files are not always still there. A family doctor's or midwife's notes are worth asking about too, especially for home births.

If a parent's records survive rather than yours, the time may be in the mother's notes for the delivery rather than in the baby's file.

Family sources

These are less formal but often closer to the event than people assume:

• a baby book or hospital bracelet card
• a birth announcement, telegram or letter sent that week
• a diary, calendar or photo album with notes
• a religious record, though baptism records usually give dates rather than times

Memories need gentle handling. "Around teatime" or "just after the night shift changed" can be more useful than a guessed clock time, because it describes something that really happened. Asking what was going on (was it light outside, had someone just arrived, was there a meal) often jogs a better answer than asking "what time was it?" twice.

Judging what you find

Not every time is equally solid. A rough order of trust:

1. a time written at the birth, such as a register entry or delivery note
2. a time written soon after, such as a letter or baby book
3. a time remembered later, especially one given confidently
4. a time remembered vaguely, as a part of the day

A precise figure like 14:52 is more likely to be a clock reading than 15:00 or 14:30, which may have been rounded. If two sources disagree, keep both and treat the gap as your working range. How accurate does your birth time need to be? shows how to test whether that range changes your Rising sign or houses.

Entering the time once you have it

Type the time as the local clock time at the place of birth, exactly as recorded. Do not convert it to UTC or remove daylight saving yourself; the free birth chart works out the time zone from the birthplace and does the conversion. If the time falls in a clock-change hour or comes from an old record, read birth time, time zones and daylight saving first.

If you only have a part of the day, you have two options. You can tick "I don't know my birth time" and work with the planets' signs, or you can try both ends of the window and see what changes. Neither gives you a confirmed Rising sign, but the second tells you how much is at stake.

If nothing turns up

Plenty of people never find a recorded time, and their charts are still worth reading. The step-by-step guide to reading a chart without a birth time shows how far the planets alone can go. Some people also look into rectification, where an astrologer estimates a time from past events. It can be interesting, but it produces an estimate, not a recovered record.

For a refresher on why the time carries so much weight, see why your birth time matters.

Related articles

• Don't Know Your Birth Time? What Your Chart Can Still Show
• How Accurate Does Your Birth Time Need to Be?
• Birth Time, Time Zones and Daylight Saving
• What Is a Birth Chart?