Requesting Illegitimate Birth Record with Wrong Last Name

[maurinini]

I've always known that my grandfather, Mario, was a "figlio naturale"—illegitimate. His parents were very young when he was conceived and they never married, yet he has always gone by his father’s last name. So when I first contacted the comune where he was born I was disappointed that they found no record of his birth.

I ordered microfilms from the LDS church and finally found his birth record in 1912 and a formal recognition by his mother in 1913. In both cases, he was recorded as Mario Maurinini.

To be clear, Maurinini is NOT his father’s last name or mother’s last name.
In fact, it’s not a name of anyone in his family nor a name that shows up after doing a google search.

It seems, after looking at other illegitimate records from the same comune that the Vice Segretario gave illegitimate children a made up cognome.

Other details I gathered through the two separate entries for him and side column notes was that his mother recognized him in 1913 and in 1929 a document was sent from Los Angeles where his father and mother “riconosciuto qual figlio naturaleâ€

[mler]

Yours is an unusual situation, and I doubt that anyone here has experience with this. I would suggest that you request the document in the name "Maurinini" because that was the name under which he was registered at birth; and also request any additional records documenting his recognition by his parents. These two combined should be enough for the consulate.

[Italysearcher]

Usually a 'riconocimento' by a parent is noted in the margin of the original birth certificate and the surname corrected on the record and in the indexes.
This is what happened when the child was recognized by the father. A recognition by a mother might not change the surname given to the child at birth. Depends on the town.
My advice is to request the original surname AND give both parents surnames indicating that he was recognised by both parents and in which years.