Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

As the image here might suggest, you are going to need to think and write notes relating to the size of your potential One-Name Study, it is nothing complicated, I promise!

Not all surnames are equal and understanding the frequency of the surname will be determining factor. The more frequency a surname appears, then the bigger the study is going to be and the more time it will take to collect, analyse and organise.

Whilst a large study is a challenge, they are, in the modern era very achievable. A fellow member of the Guild of One-Name Studies told me that it took him 10 years to collect all the instances of his surname from the General Registration Office (GRO) indexes. Now, thanks to sites like FreeBMD it is possible to download the data in a matter of minutes. That study has gone on to create a large database of about 77,000 instances of the surname. That study is the Featherstone One-Name Study which began in the 1990’s. Another large study is that of the Howes One-Name Study, which began about 10 years ago and has circa 130,000 individuals in reconstructed families.

For a moment, lets turn our attention to surnames whose origins are England and Wales. To determine the frequency of those names, we would look see how many instances of the name occur in the 1881 Census.

• 1-30 Tiny study
• 30-300 Small study
• 300 – 3,000 Medium study
• 3,000 – 30,000 Large study
• 30,000 – 300,000 Extra large study
• >300,000 are huge studies such as Jones Smith

For my Orlando One-Name Study, there are less than 300 in England and Wales, so that appears to be a small study, but the surname is an Italian one, with huge peaks of migration to other Countries – Look back to the Surname Profiler Map that I mentioned a few days ago.

For surnames in the United States turn to Ancestry and check the frequency of the surname there.

There are other considerations too, in the case of European surnames there will be peaks of mass migration caused by important aspects of European history.

There is a useful page on the Guild of One-Name Studies website about choosing a surname and about the size of a study. In fact you can see the numbers relating to the Orlando, Featherstone and Howes studies, so it is worth reading and you can do so here

Why not consider the surnames of your four Grandparents – would they be suitable as One-Name Studies? And if no, why not? – Go on, leave a comment or write about it on you own blog and leave the URL below.

More details and information is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

As any genealogist or family historian will tell you there are always more questions than answers and always a burning obsession to find out more, even if the odds are against a successful search.

There are a variety of reasons for researching a surname, here are just a few:

• General curiousity about the surname.
• Where does the surname come from?
• My name is foreign, how did it get here?
• Spellings of different surnames and are they related?
• An attempt to demolish a genealogical brick wall.
• By collecting all the references to a given name, it means that you do not necessarily miss your elusive ancestor.
• …….the list is endless; and there is no right or wrong answer.

More than likely you will have already started your surname research before you become aware of the concept and before you have considered the basic foundations for a study.

What are the foundations? well here are a few things to consider:

• Seek to understand the history of the surname
  • Where did it come from
  • What does it mean
  • How big might my study be?
• What do you want to achieve by undertaking your study?
  • It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a firm idea, but begin thinking about it.

More details and information is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

The Guild of One-Name Studies advocate the Seven Steps of a One-Name Study. These are effectively the stages of surname research and the it is not necessary to move through the steps in the order they are displayed here.  It would be quite usual to spend considerable time in the collect stage before proceeding to the others.

courtesy of the Guild of One-Name Studies one-name.org

It might also be, especially if a member blogs about their study, to publish about a person, group of people, migration details, in fact anything about the study and then publicise the blog post using social media.

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is available from the Guild directly (Guild members should login) and for those of you wanting a Kindle version, via Amazon.

More details about the Seven Steps is covered in the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

Yesterday I shared the information that the next Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies course will begin on 13 February.

I thought that  some people might be wondering what a One-Name study is.

Essentially it is a project which focus’ on a single surname, regardless of any connection between people bearing the same name. If the surname is registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies then there is a commitment to aspire to research the surname globally.

Over the years, a number of people have said they find that too challenging, and I have a number of things to reassure. The Guild does not assert any pressure on the study registrant – there is no time span, you work on your study at your own pace.

Global Considerations:

• Depend on the size of the study
• Access to records – not everything is online
• Time commitment from the registrant

I have three studies registered, one I am about to pass to my husband as that relates to his family. That is fairly small, even on a global scale. Certainly in England and Wales it is very regional – predominately in the Counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Yorkshire. Even in the United States there appears to be relatively few instances of the surname.

My two studies that relate to my own family represent the surnames of my parents. One is an occupational name and it is a medium to large study, the other is for an Italian surname. From an assessment of English records, it appears to be a reasonably small study. I said appears to be, because the reality is, in Italy and not surprising the United States the surname is very popular and that means it is another medium to large study.

So I have essentially two large studies that represent my parental families. Over the coming months I will share bits about the studies but the reality is, the few items I have listed above will influence how quick you leave one Country and move to another. If you start your research in the United States it might take you ten years to leave the US because of the availability of records or the amount of records or perhaps both of those elements come into play.

Have a look at the website World Names Public Profiler insert your surname of interest and your email address and a map of the world will populate and that will give you an idea of where your surname appears.

Here is the map for my Italian surname of ORLANDO

So they are definitely global with the majority appearing in Italy, Argentina, Australia, United States, Canada, India and through parts of Europe.

Apart from being a surname research project, it is a wonderfully interesting way to add dimension to your family history and genealogical pursuits.