Sunday, October 31, 2010

Hallowe'en Names in the Records

There are a number of families in the Rootsweb WorldConnect database at http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi  that have surnames connected to Hallowe'en. For instance:

1) The GHOST surname - there are 508 entries, including the descendants of Philip Ghost of Westmoreland County PA - see 6 generations here. It looks like at least one GHOST from this family is still living.

2) The GOBLIN surname - there are 43 entries. It looks like there are no real GOBLIN family trees - only isolated GOBLIN women who married men with other surnames.

3) The SKELETON surname - there are 403 entries but few trees with many generations. Methinks these are mostly misspelled SKELTON people.

4) The FRANKENSTEIN surname - There are 1,012 entries, and most of them are of German origin. One family that settled in Rochester NY is here. There is one Frank N. Stein here.

5) The WITCH surname - there are 125 entries, but no long family lines in the database. Some of these are those accused of witchcraft.

6) The PUMPKIN surname - there are 70 entries, but no long family lines.

7) The HAUNT surname - there are only 4 entries, none with a family line.

8) The SPOOK surname - there are 25 entries, and only one with a three generation family. There are 34 entries for people with the first name of Spook and 23 for the first name of Spooky.

9) The GHOUL surname - there are 14 entries.

10) The JACKO surname has 292 entries.

11) The LANTERN surname has 283 entries. But there are no people named Jack O. Lantern.

12) There are 235 CAT surname entries and 10,107 CATT entries. There are no Black Cat names.

13) There are 18 SCARY surname entries - many of them still living. There are 78 entries for a given name of Scary.

14) There are 55 DRACULA surname entries, many of them are related to The Count.   There are 36 entries for a given name of DRACULA.

15) There are 534 CEMETERY entries, some of them the name of actual cemetery databases.

16) There are 1,989 MONSTER entries. No Monster Mash, though (there are 2,738 surname entries for MASH). Or a Boris Pickett.

17) There are 711 SKULL surname entries.

18) There are 96 SPIRIT entries. There are 6 entries for a Holy Spirit with a spouse named Mary, with a child.

19) There are 3 entries for "Spider WEBB"

20) There are 198 entries for SCREECH surname. And 34 entries for a given name or nickname of Screech.

21) There are 4 entries for HALLOWEEN surname - even a Mary Halloween.

22) There are no VAMPIRE surname entries, and 1 given name entry.

23) There are 16,686 BROOM surname entries.

24) There are 119 BAT surname entries, 15,417 BATT surname entries and 9,725 BATTY surname entries

25) There are no ZOMBIE surname entries or given name entries. Whew!

Enough!! What other Hallowe'en oriented surnames can you think of? Are they in WorldConnect?

Happy Hallowe'en!! Trick or Treat?

Yep - TRICK surname has 3,729 surname entries and TREAT surname has 55,986 entries!

FYI, Ancestry.com published a press release back in 2006 with Hallowe'en census entries - see the list here.

Chris Dunham did some Census Whacking on Hallowe'en names in his post here.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Randy,
Our son went to an allergist, Dr. Ghory (pronounced "gory"). His wife was a surgical nurse. Imagine the reactions of people at the hospital when "nurse Ghory to surgery" went out over the PA system.

Eileen said...

There were 3 hits on John O'lantern and we all know the nickname for John is...

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

There are over 623,000 for the surname DEATH at Rootsweb. I found this a few years ago in my own family tree in Massachusetts in the 1600s, and it's always given me the shivers.

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

Sorry, that's over 10,000 for DEATH. Not quite as scary!