UpFront with NGS: Surnames

Showing posts with label Surnames. Show all posts

06 April 2017

Surname Extinction -- Might it happen?

Surname Extinction -- Might it happen?

Last month on the APG Members Only List, a colleague shared a link to this video, Surname Extinction: When will we all be "Smiths"?

It is an interesting thing to think about … As diversity in surnames disappears, it adds to our research challenges on many levels – separating out like-named individuals, losing the history of particular surnames/families and more.

I have often shared about my Finnish ancestors where Kujanpää¹ became Acey. The thing is, that this name changed occurred in the U.S. upon emigration. Only sisters of the emigrant emigrated also (and so they bore the names of their spouses; the other brothers remained in Finland) and the emigrant had one son and three daughters. Long story short, the one son, had one son, who also had one son and that son had only daughters! So, with the current generation, the surname Acey, for our family, becomes extinct.

I have also researched client projects where you can clearly see that whole generations of family members didn’t marry and/or married and didn’t have issue (aka children). So, where a tree was large at one point, trying to identify living descendants is almost problematic.

Have any surnames in your family become extinct, at least as far as your direct ancestral line is concerned?

Do you think that surnames will continue to become extinct? Will we all become Smiths?

¹Currently there are about 898 people with this surname in the world, not surprisingly, most of them are in Finland, http://forebears.io/surnames/kujanpää. Similarly there are about 909 people with the Acey surname, http://forebears.io/surnames/acey.

Editor’s Note: Previous posts about this family include: Our Often Unheralded and Underestimated Friends – Government Clerks! Never Underestimate What They Might Do For You!, Ellis Island -- Names were NOT changed! A very persistent myth perpetuated in our genealogical world ..., and Using Google Search for Different Countries -- a Neat Genealogical Research Tool!.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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18 March 2016

Middle Names and their Popularity (1880-2000)

We often talk about surnames and forenames. What about middle names?

I love middle names when doing research, especially when common forenames and surnames are involved. Other than that, I don’t often think about them. Many years ago, my middle name just became an initial “L.” in my signature since I’m not fond of my middle name.

I was reminded of middle names recently when I read, The most common middle names from the last 12 decades. For each identified top ranking middle name, you will find a graph showing the rank of that particular middle name from 1880 to 2000. If the name is also prevalent in the UK or the Scandinavian countries, graphs depicting such will also be included. The US data is based on the Social Security Death Index.

Have you successfully used information about name frequency, locale-specific trends or other name driven demographic type data to help your genealogy research? If so, please share.

Editor’s Note: Related posts -- Using Name Popularity to Determine Someone’s Age (2014) and Names -- A Blessing or a Curse (2013)

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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25 July 2014

Upfront Mini Bytes – Adoption, Chicago, Tribal Maps, Odd French Linguistics, Surname Distribution, Tips for Reading Old Handwriting, Historic Photos, and Digitized Australian Newspapers

Editor’s Note: After a brief moratorium, Upfront Mini Bytes are back!

Welcome to our newest edition of our periodic feature Upfront Mini Bytes. In Upfront Mini Bytes we provide eight tasty bits of genealogy news that will help give you a deeper byte into your family history research. Each item is short and sweet. We encourage you to check out the links to articles, blog posts, resources, and anything genealogical!

We hope you found the past editions helpful. Use your favorite search engine with “Upfront with NGS” “Mini Bytes” or use this Google search link.

Do you have questions, suggestions for future posts, or comments? Please post a comment or send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

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The Adoption History Project has a neat online archive. Many in our family history community are adopted or are researching adoptions involving ancestors. It has subsections labeled: Timeline, People & Organizations, Adoption Studies/Science, Topics in Adoption History, Further Reading, and Document Archives. There is a lot of helpful material here, especially when you are seeking historical context.

Have roots or connections to Chicago? Checkout This Clever Map Compares Chicago Before and After the Great Fire. You can overlay two maps: “One, culled from Google Maps’ API, shows Chicago of (roughly) today. The other is a color map of the city drawn in 1868, three years before the Great Fire.”

2010 Census - Tribal Tract Reference Maps are available from the US Census Bureau. These give you a very detailed perspective on tribal census tracts and tribal block groups as delineated to support 2010 Census data dissemination. The maps also show the boundaries and names of American Indian reservations, off-reservation trust lands (ORTLs), Alaska Native areas, Hawaiian home lands, states, counties, county subdivisions, places, and much more. A great resource to match against historic maps and visualize how reservations have changed through time.

If you are doing French genealogy, be aware of some Linguistic Oddities. “Beyond the study of name-mangling in parish and civil registrations is the issue of odd terminology ... Reading civil and parish registrations is repetitious work and just as we begin to doze off, invariably, an odd term will snap us awake, even make us laugh. But these terms can be baffling as well, so today we give a mini-lexicon.”

Appreciating where surnames might be found can often help us advance our genealogy research. One tool that might help you is PublicProfiler Worldnames. At this site, you enter your surname (or the one that interests you) and run a search to determine the world-wide distribution of the name. Do know that you need to enter an email address and indicate gender to get started. The coverage is North American, Europe, the UK, India, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. The map shown is for Barna which fits my ancestor’s migration from Galicia (Poland near the borders with the Ukraine and Slovakia (previously Kingdom of Hungary).

Though not “new” definitely important to our research: Tips for reading old handwriting, Tips for Reading Old Records: Handwriting, Spelling, and Boundaries, and Deciphering Old Handwriting. If you want to test yourself on Early American Handwriting, play this “game” to decode the messages of handwritten documents. How did you do?

A fun visual bit of history, 14 Amateur Photos Taken With the Very First Consumer Camera. “Introduced in 1888, the Kodak No. 1 was the first camera marketed to average consumers. And thanks to a new set of images from the National Media Museum, we can now see what kinds of photos these early amateurs shot.”

Trove is a wonderful collection of digitized Australian newspapers. It includes National, Regional, and State newspapers. As of earlier this week there were 13,683,606 pages consisting of 131,943,198 articles available to search, covering from 1803 to 2007. Learn more about the Australian Newspaper Digitsation Program.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to everyone that responded to the Upfront Mini Bytes survey. Based on your feedback, this feature will continue with the same format and frequency.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter