Case study - finding Paul

I've met Paul Smith - my half-brother - once. There's a photo of us standing together, taken when I was six and Paul was about nine. Earlier this month I tracked down Paul's family through the birth, death and marriage (BDM) registers.

My brother's name is pretty common. Type "P Smith" into the White Pages and you'll find 667 different entries. Google "Paul Smith" and you'll find a rugby league player of the same name.

To find my brother, I needed his full name and date of birth.

I pulled his birth certificate at the registry in the hope that I'd then be able to track his address through the electoral rolls, which are available at the public library.

It costs $20 to get a printout of someone's birth certificate - and anyone can do this by filling in the forms (available online at www.bdm.govt.nz). The most difficult bit is picking when the person was born. The registry staff search either side of the year you choose, but if they have to go beyond that it costs $1 for each additional year.

The job becomes easier if you can walk into the BDM offices in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch.

I went to the Wellington office armed only with Paul's name and a vague idea of when he was born. I used the microfiched index to uncover what I thought was his full name and date of birth free of charge. I then paid $20 for a printout of Paul's birth certificate.

It turns out that Paul's last name isn't "Smith" after all. It's "Kingston-Smith". The unusual double-barrelled last name makes Paul easier to find online through Google and Face Book. I typed "Kingston-Smith" into both and an IT manager named John Kingston-Smith appeared. John's my uncle.

The hardest bit of finding Paul is still to come. I have to pluck up the courage to call ...