Marriage certificate no further details given. On 5 September 2005, the Registrar General in England and Wales officially abolished the traditional terms of "bachelor" and "spinster" and substituted the more politically correct "single" to coincide with the reform that introduced civil partnerships, explaining, "The word single will be used to mean a couple who has never been through a marriage or civil partnership." Unlike birth and death registrations, the local (church) copies of marriage registers for churches are treated as ecclesiastical records and thus are deposited in diocesan record offices or county record offices (often but not always the same office) when
Bachelor Bachelor A bachelor is a man who is socially regarded as able to marry, but has not yet. It is also the title of anyone of any gender or marital status who holds a bachelor's degree. The word is first attested as the 12th-century "bacheler", a knight bachelor, a knight too young or poor to gather vassals under his own banner. The Old French ' presumably derives from Provençal ' and Italian ', but the ultimate source of the word is uncertain. The proposed Medieval Latin *' ("vassal", "field hand") is only attested late enough that it may have derived