Proceed with caution! I've added several people to my tree based on name-related hunches - most have them were later proved correct, but there was one which turned out to be wrong which I only found out about five years later, having wasted a fair amount of time and money on researching that branch. The aforementioned FMFF had no father named on his birth certificate - his given name was William and he had no middle name, so not too many clues to be had there! On my mother's side there's one woman (pre-civ reg) who had four illegitimate children; three were baptised and had the father's name recorded in the register, the fourth wasn't - and naturally the one who wasn't had to be the one from whom I'm descended. If the father was the same in the other three cases it would be a reasonable bet that he was in the fourth too, but no - they were all different, so the father of the fourth could have been any of the others or someone else again. Since some of the other documents which might have revealed the father's identity were considered too fragile to be entrusted to an amateur, I had to pay for the research service at the relevant RO to get at the information, but although the Overseer of the Poor's account book revealed some interesting details of payments made to the family, it didn't, as I had hoped, mention pursuing the father for maintenance money. I think it's reasonable to assume that if the professionals couldn't find any record of him either then it's almost certain that no such record exists, so I've given up on that one now.
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