Three in ten notaries work in a second language, and that is the job
The Faculty Office register's most practical column is not the address. Of 817 notaries, 247 list more than one language and 112 list French. For a profession whose work is authenticating documents for use abroad, that is the register.
By Rose Traviss · 27 September 2026
A notary public authenticates documents for use in another jurisdiction. It is the smallest of the regulated legal professions in England and Wales — 817 on the Faculty Office’s register as collected — the oldest, admitted under the Public Notaries Act 1801 by the Master of the Faculties on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s authority, and the only one whose entire purpose is that somebody abroad will rely on the document.
So the register’s language column is not a nicety. It is the closest thing the profession has to a practice-area field.
The figures
Of the 817 notaries on the register, 247 — 30.2% — list more than one language. Another 449 list English alone, and 64 list no language at all.
| Language | Notaries |
|---|---|
| English | 660 |
| French | 112 |
| Spanish | 92 |
| Italian | 58 |
| German | 46 |
| Punjabi | 45 |
| Hindi | 40 |
| Portuguese | 28 |
| Urdu | 27 |
| Polish | 18 |
The shape of that list is worth a moment. The top five are what a reader would guess: the languages of the jurisdictions English commercial and property documents most often travel to. The next four are not. Punjabi at 45, Hindi at 40 and Urdu at 27 together exceed French, and they are not there because of where documents go — they are there because of who needs them. A notarised power of attorney for a property transaction in Punjab or a succession in Pakistan is work that arrives in English and has to be explained in the client’s own language.
That is a profession serving diaspora families, and it does not appear in any description of what notaries do.
Nineteen of them are not in England and Wales
The register includes notaries practising in Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, because the Master of the Faculties’ jurisdiction extends there. They are counted here because the register counts them, and they are flagged in the data rather than quietly dropped: a figure for “notaries in England and Wales” taken from this register without that adjustment is slightly too high, and the adjustment is small enough to be missed.
What the register does not have
No individual page. The Faculty Office’s register is one search form; there is no address for a given notary that anybody can link to, cite, or find in a search engine. Of the 817 entries, 557 carry the Faculty Office’s own internal record number, which is visible only because those notaries have uploaded a photograph and the number is in the image’s path. The other 260 have no identifier at all, which is why the addresses of their pages here are derived from name and postcode and will change if either changes.
And nothing about discipline. The Faculty Office’s own description of the search says results “note any current disciplinary matters against them, with direct links”. Across 817 entries as collected, none did. Either there are none currently published, or the field does not appear in the search results — the register does not distinguish those, and neither does this site. Compare the Costs Lawyer Standards Board, which states the position on every single entry including the negative, and so can be counted from.
Source: the Faculty Office register, via notaryPRO, collected 27 September 2026. The Faculty Office asserts copyright in its whole site, prohibits copying without consent, and states that linking to it is not permitted without consent either; see sources and licences.