# What is meant by place of birth on a passport **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 28, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-meant-by-place-of-birth-on-a-passport/576297 "2011-03-28T19:21:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2013, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-meant-by-place-of-birth-on-a-passport/576297/61 "2013-10-06T10:35:03Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > I was born in one county (Berkshire), which was different than the county where we lived (Hampshire), and which was different again from the county in our postal address (Surrey). > > There must be a fairly limited number of towns of birth in the UK. A quick Googling suggests there are only 220 maternity units in the country, and a quarter of those deliver less than 2500 babies a year. > > I’m not too sure where home births would be registered as occurring - whether any tiny village could be named or whether it would get assigned to the nearest sizeable town. I was born at home in a small Oxfordshire village, which had three pubs, one shop, and no hospital. That village is on my birth cert. The story further up about a woman who insisted that her child was not to be born in some hated town, reminds me of a (possibly apocryphal) story: Yorkshire and Lancashire are two adjacent English counties with a long history of rivalry (check out wars of the roses). In modern times this rivalry has been fought out mainly on the cricket field. At one time it was a requirement that all players had to be born in the county they played for, and it is said that fathers would take their pregnant wives to their preferred county so that the child, if a boy, could represent their choice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-meant-by-place-of-birth-on-a-passport/576297.md?page=3)