Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

I am hopeful that the various posts over the course of the A-Z Challenge, which has been about surnames, surname research and registering a One-Name Study has been enjoyable and given you plenty of scope for ideas and thoughts.

You can see all the posts I have written about surname research HERE and there is a small list of other writings about One-Name Studies and surnames that featured under Writing about your One-Name Study

So what to do next if you are enthused about One-Name Studies and surnames:

• Visit the One-Name Studies website and perhaps
• Join the Guild of One-Name Studies and see what the organisation offers
• Sign up for the Pharos Course – Introduction to One-Name Studies the course runs over five weeks and you will broadly learn:
  • About One-Name Studies
    • History of One-Name Studies
    • Why have a One-Name Study
    • How suitable is my surname
    • Introduction to the Guild of One-Name Study
    • Getting started
  • Surnames and their history
    • How did surnames start?
    • An introduction to common meanings & deviations of British Surnames
      • Non-British surnames
    • Changes, spellings, deviations, Other pitfalls for the unwary
      • Deviants and Variants
    • Surname Distribution & Migration
    • Importance of individual surname studies
  • Core records you will need and information gathering
    • What are core records?
    • Civil Registration records and indexes in the British & Ireland
    • Indexes to the Census
    • Family Search, will indexes and other readily available indexes
    • Data Capture
    • Measuring your progress
    • Organising your One-Name Study 
  • Analysing and making sense of your data
    • Introduction to analysis
    • Designing spreadsheets
    • Family reconstruction
      • Software for a One-Name Study
    • Migration & linking people to places
    • Finding missing data
    • Drawing conclusions
  • Practical aspects of running your own One-Name Study
    • Registering a study with the Guild
    • Ethics
    • Data Protection
    • Publishing your study
      • Facebook Groups & pages
    • Preserving your study
    • Organising your time
• Purchase a copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The art of a One-Name Study.
  • Available from the Guild

I teach all three of the Pharos surname and One-Name Studies courses and have two studies, one is a Surname whose origins are typically British and the other is for an Italian surname.

The chances are you have been undertaking a study and not necessarily realising that it is a One-Name Study, you can read more HERE. Whether you are new to the concept or have been undertaking a surname research project for a while why not consider your aims for your study.

The next Pharos Introduction course begins 9 July 2024 and you can sign up HERE

I hope you have enjoyed the A-Z series as much as I have enjoyed writing them. Over the course of the last month I have promised I would come back to several topics and plan to do that over the coming weeks.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Once a genealogist has registered the surname with the Guild they agree to do essentially several things:

• Aim to make the study global
• Respond to all enquiries.

In fact the five broad principles can be seen here.

There is guidance for a study, the Guild has mentors and volunteers that will help guide you, answer questions and so forth. There is the book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom which was published by the Guild in 2012. There is a suite of courses available, all providing a mechanism to learn and develop.

• • Introduction to One-Name Studies course – a foundation for undertaking a study – learning about the numbers that reflect the people in your study, the history of surnames, and then drawing conclusions as to the history of your surname of interest.

• • Practicalities of a One-Name Studies course – focuses on tools that you can use in your study. I am often asked whether this should be taken first, or the Introduction course, and it is probably as broad, as it is long. If I was coming to this as a fairly new genealogists, or surname researcher, I would likely take both courses; they focus on different things and provide a rounded focus on researching a surname and developing a study.
• • Advanced One-Name Studies course – builds on the material learnt in the introduction course and is probably best taken when you have some time under your belt with a study. This provides the opportunity to create an article and for those who elect to, to have the article read and published in the Journal of One-Name Studies. 

Each time a course runs, students are invited to leave feedback. Feedback is important and provides a mechanism for me to develop the course, or perhaps create an additional paper. A recent addition, as a support document is guidance for developing, and building a study profile – you can download a copy HERE.

The details of your study are left up to you to decide – the core data, the storage of the data, when you go global etc. There is no prescriptive way and where you start may well depend on the origins of the surname.

I have stated several times that I research in three places at one

• • • Where I am (England)
    • Where my family originated (the surname is clearly Italian, and my own family are from Sicily)
    • Where they went (Italian migrated globally, but the key places are Argentina, United States and Australia. My own family line went to New York, Alabama and Louisiana, so those three states are my US focus).

Some members like to work on their studies in a more random approach and in some respects I like that too. If you decide to do this, I really recommend that you keep a research log, recording where what you have researched and your findings. If you do stop part way through a larger body of research you will be better placed, and able to pick up where you left off.

The One-Name Study that YOU register is YOURS, you decide how it is kept and maintained and consider the aims of your study. You work at your pace and enjoy the experience and research.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The phrase X Marks the Spot is typical to denote where someone should sign their name or perhaps it denotes a pin mark on a map identifying where a particular location is.

So today I am going to chat about bringing to life the people who are in our own ancestral lines or people with whom we share no connection, but they bare the surname we are researching.

On occasions, when I am researching a family who appear in my One-Name Study I often have to remind myself that these were not my people, but fit into someone’s ancestry. So where do we stop researching?

Some One-Namer’s record the marriage between two people, one of whom appears in their study. Depending if the individual who bears the surname will depend on how far the line is followed. If the line is male it is easier to define, but a female poses a question and consideration.

The Guild offers no suggestion to this quandary and I personally follow the female line through to children and then what happens to those children. Sometimes there is a cross over between two studies, both registered with the Guild and in those instances I reach out to the other member and offer to do a reciprocal swap of information. That is one of the nicest things about the Guild – the friendly responses, connections and collaborations. To quote a former Chairman “members helping members” Families do often marry into each other, and sometimes more than once.

Whether these folk are our own ancestors or part of our study it is quite fascinating to follow someone’s life through their trials and tribulations and for us to attempt to understand all the details. If we are very lucky we connect with an ancestor of the person who perhaps shed further light on them or provide snippets of information.