Saturday, March 10, 2012

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Surnames?

I decided to take a stab at Randy's SNGF challenge this week. Here are the instructions:

1) Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to Count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2) Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3) Tell us how many surnames are in your database and, if possible, which Surname has the most entries. If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5! Or 10!

4) Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a status or comment on Facebook, or in Google Plus Stream post.


I use RootsMagic 5. I ran a quick and easy "Surname Statistics" list from the "Reports" tab and chose to sort the list according to surname frequency.

The list shows a total of 71 surnames, but technically "LNU" doesn't qualify, so I'm going to say 70. I don't have nearly as many people in my database as Randy does (only 305 so far), so my list was only 2 pages long.

My top 5* surnames and corresponding date ranges are:

5. Schneider (1819-1969) 10 individuals (8 male, 2 female)
4. Crowe (1867-1987) 20 individuals (13 male, 7 female)
3. Huber (1837-1982) 30 individuals (14 male, 16 female)
2. Lanctot (1824-present) 31 individuals (18 male, 13 female)
1. Slowey (1815-2004) 40 individuals (19 male, 21 female)

Randy asked about a count on given names. I tried to make one using the custom report maker in RM5, but was unsuccessful. I was able to make a list of all the individuals in my database, sorted by given name, but unable to get a count of each given name. I think this might be difficult since middle names are included in the "given name" field. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. I'm able to count the 17 Marys and 10 Patricks (both ranked #1 on the list - Anna and John were a close 2nd) in my database, but I don't have 41,000+ individuals, either.

*Technically, my LNU category was the 5th largest with 11 (1 male, 10 females).

Do we share any ancestors?
Please email me at lostancestors [at] gmail [dot] com

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