Image designed and made available by http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/
This is my third instalment of the A-Z Challenge 2021. You can visit other participants HERE. You can follow along my posts HERE.
There are a great many consideration relevant to surname research when you first begin looking at the wider picture of surnames or looking specifically at a particular surname.
Copyright – Julie Goucher 2021
The image above is from my presentation Pursuing Surnames. It does look quite faint, but beneath the image I list the various elements. We talk about some of these in the new Pharos Course, Researching Ancestors in Continental Europe (750). You can download a clearer image HERE. The relevance to your surname will vary depending on the origins of the surname.
- Foundlings and illegitimacy
- Naming conventions – Given name and surnames (Iberian Countries)
- Religion practiced
- History of the Country
- Language
- Alphabet
- Dialects
- DNA
- Geography
- Borders
- Connections to other European Countries and European Empires
Individuals might take name of another family member, a step father or an alias. Or there might be influences of other factors, such as a Detto in the case of Italian surnames. The alphabet is also potentially different. In Italy, there are fewer letter and the letters of I and J are interchangeable, but how interchangeable? Below is the surname distribution maps for both SAIA and SAJA surnames, created with Gens.info – You can see the most common surname of the two, why is that?
Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest 