Saturday, October 21, 2017

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Top 10 (or 20) Surnames in Your Family Tree

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!



Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

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 what the top 10 (or 20)  surnames are in your database and, if possible, how many entries.  How many different surnames are in your family tree?

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.

NOTE:  If you can't figure out how to do this in your GMP (Genealogy Management Program), use the Help button in your program and search for "count surnames" then follow directions.  

Here's mine:

I'm going to use RootsMagic 7 because that's where I'm doing my current additions, deletions and editing and is my most up-to-date collection.  In RootsMagic 7, go to Reports, then Lists and scroll down to "Surname Statistics List."  I then chose "Frequency of Surnames" from the list presented.
  Here's the top 20:

That took about 40 seconds and I have a 172 page list!  I didn't count every one of them - there are 172 pages with 39 names per page.  That's a grand total of about 6,700 surnames in my database with 48,875 persons.  The top 20 are, with birth date ranges:

*  SEAVER - 5,364 persons, from 1608 to 2017

*  [unknown] - 1,396 persons, from 747 to 2016
*  BUCK - 771 persons, from 1577 to 2009

*  SMITH - 744 persons, from 1526 to 2015
* VAUX - 489 persons, from 1620 to 2013

*  FITZ RANDOLPH - 483 persons, from 1420 to 1884
*  DILL - 480 persons, from 1629 to 2014
*  SEVER - 454 persons, from 1673 to 2016
*  NEWTON - 331 persons, from 1600 to 2008
*  CHAMPLIN - 302 persons, from 1615 to 1917

*  RICHMAN - 302 persons, from 1598 to 1985
*  AUBLE - 298 persons, from 1770 to 2014
*  CULVER - 264 persons, from 1700 to 2010
*  WHITE - 259 persons, from 1570 to 2015
*  BROWN - 258 persons, from 1580 to 2000

*  BRESEE - 256 persons, from 1650 to 1900
*  KEMP - 215 persons, from 1672 to 2016
*  HAWKINS - 214 persons, from 1570 to 1975
*  CARRINGER - 212 persons, from 1758 to 2015
*  McKNEW - 207 persons, from 1640 to 2007

NOTE:  We've done this before. See  Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- How Many Surnames in Your Family Tree Database? (on 3 September 2016) for the last time we did this for SNGF.  My list has changed a little since I added 2,168 persons since then, including 278 SEAVER and 94 AUBLE persons.

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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7 comments:

GeneGinny said...

I apparently haven't done this SNGF in the past, so here's mine: http://geneginny.blogspot.com/2017/10/sngf-surname-counts.html

Marian B. Wood said...

Fun and by coincidence, I just learned how to use this report function a short time ago. I used RootsMagic 7 and discovered that the top surname in hubby's Wood family tree is--ta da--Wood (with 183 people dating back to 1551). Took a screen shot similar to yours and posted it on my blog: http://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2017/10/family-history-month-top-10-surnames-on.html

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

I was surprised by my numbers. https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2017/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-top-10-or.html

Lois Willis said...

In my post, I compared my figures to the post I did last year.
https://loiswillis.blog/2017/10/22/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-top-10-or-20-surnames-in-your-family-tree/

Janice M. Sellers said...

I was a little surprised by my numbers also:

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2017/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-top-10-or.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here are my surnames and numbers, none of which was really any surprise: http://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2017/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-top-20-surnames/

dolphin said...

That was a good challenge. I used Ancestry and had to contact their help department to learn how to list all the names in my tree. I learned that there are names..
I could only view them in lots of 100 which I downloaded into an excel spreadsheet.
Unfortunately there is no way in their programme to determine how many times a name occurs short of physically counting them.
I now know that there are 1599 names in my tree