Saturday, March 23, 2013

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Surnames?


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 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.

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

Here's mine:

I'm going to use RootsMagic 6 because that's where I'm doing my current additions, deletions and editing and is my most up-to-date collection.  In RootsMagic 6, go to Reports, then Lists and scroll down to "Surname Statistics List."  I then chose "Frequency of Surnames" from the list presented.

That took about 20 seconds and I have a 150 page list!  I didn't count every one of them - there are 149 pages with 39 names per page, plus the last page has 13.  That's a grand total of 5,824 surnames in my database with 41,533 persons.  The top 10 are, with birth date ranges:

*  SEAVER - 4,360 persons, from 1608 to 2011
*  BUCK - 680 persons, from 1585 to 1965
*  SMITH - 644 persons, from 1526 to 2005*  FITZ RANDOLPH - 483 persons, from 1565 to 1884
* VAUX - 465 persons, from 1620 to 2006

*  DILL - 421 persons, from 1645 to 1993
*  RICHMAN - 320 persons, from 1622 to 1985
*  NEWTON - 317 persons, from 1690 to 1997
*  CHAMPLIN - 302 persons, from 1618 to 1903
*  CULVER - 270 persons from 1650 to 1981

I have 141 Mary's without a surname, and 127 Elizabeth's without a surname, and 307 persons without any name at all (there's a blank line for this one!).

Of course, if I added up all the persons without a surname, my LNU's are probably the biggest group on the list. 

I didn't see a way to get a count on first names - can anyone figure this out in RootsMagic 6, or in another program?  


The URL for this post is:

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

16 comments:

Randy said...

361 surnames
Used RootsMagic Surname Statistics Report for this task
Top 5 surnames:

Barker
Roller
Bonecutter
Prickett
Clark
not included is "surname unknown"

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

I used RootsMagic 5 to do this. I had 28 pages with a total of 4,065 names. The most at 259 were those without surnames! The top 10 names are:
Loveless 1766-2011
Welch 1662-1983
Lancaster 1734-2012
Coor 1715-2006
Gorrell 1770-2011
Nilsen 1865-2011
Tierney 1777-1977
Bishop 1765-1957
Lundquist 1844-2002
Sullivan 1811-1990

I'd have more Nilsen & Lundquist, except these are the immigrants who came to America and their ancestors used patronymic names.

What I found interesting was looking at the single entries. Some were first names and others were misspelled surnames. I have some fixing to do!

Karen said...

I used FTM 2012 surname report. I have 7055 people with 1148 unique names, including LNU.

Surname Count Male Female Earliest Most recent
Spurgeon 335 158 176 1770 1943
Fleener 310 157 153 1754 1941
Helmick 224 112 112 1682 1937
Hendrickson 208 109 99 1737 1938
Decker 154 88 66 1803 1955
Winters 121 58 63 1732 1948
Fishel 111 64 47 1810 1939
Reneau 111 52 59 1687 1930
Bilderback 105 61 44 1660 1945
Morgareidge 102 64 38 1700 1909

Eileen said...

I use the FTM 2012 Surname Report. I selected "all individuals" and "sort by surname count." The report totaled 1007 individuals with 233 unique surnames.

My top 10 are:
Noble 1826-1966
Schuck 1825-1933
Meisberger 1804-1929
Shuda 1798-1909
Bianchi 1831-1958
Strauser 1804-1910
Gunther 1858-1930
Concini 1851-1979
Madara 1887-1930
McGinn 1829-1908

Liz said...

Here's mine:

http://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2013/03/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how-many.html

That was awesome, Randy! And I am so impressed that you still got that post done while enjoying Roots Tech!! :)

Rosemary said...

I used Family Tree Maker 2012 Surname report for this sorted by surname count and the top 10 are:

Reeder 156, from 1736 to 1995
Bailey 117, from 1759 to 1947
Wright 99, from 1703 to 1905
Free 79, from 1757 to 1962
Barling 74, from 1788 to 1922
Brothers 63, from 1724 to 1925
Lindsay 57, from 1814 to 1971
Annakin 53, from 1756 to 1960
Barnard 51, from 1754 to 1898
Ketteringham 50, from 1765 to 1907

There are 4462 people in this tree and it doesn't contain any of my spouse's family. The only way I can think of to get the first names is to create a custom report containing first name(s) and last name, exporting it to a spreadsheet, and then looking at the distribution.


Mel said...

Here's is my post on my surname tallies http://www.researchjournal.yourislandroutes.com/2013/03/sngf-surname-tallies/

Unknown said...

Thanks Randy! Here is mine:

http://www.genealogysphere.com/2013/03/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how-many.html

Unknown said...

Using Legacy Family Tree I have 357 unique surnames for 1503 individuals in 474 families. This information is available on the General Information option on the Help Menu.

To find how many individuals per surname use the reports icon on the toolbar and select Books/Other tab. The Surname Summary is one of the miscellaneous reports.

Name Qty Date Range
Maby 212 1714 - 1993
Oldham 143 1704 - 1924
Shaw 68 1799 - 1928
Whittington 57 1616 - 1843
Bourgeois 52 1772 - 1873
Richmond 44 1800 - 1992
Boudreaux 43 1775 - 1886
Maddox 37 1774 - 1940
Clement 35 1770 - 1938
Bowers 33 1775 - 1900

No Surname 41 1700 - 2012

It is in alphabetical order but can be output to a CSV and imported in Excel to be resorted.

I have not done much with collateral lines as I am still working on entering and finding my direct lines. Looking at the numbers that others have I see I have a long way to go.

Sandy Scott said...

I used Roots Magic 6 to make my list. I have 24 pages of 45 names each plus 2, or a total of 1082 names. The top 10 names are:
Shortridge - 252 from 1630 to 2003
Coffin - 169 from 1561 to 2008
Unknown - 127 from 1625 to 1991
Freienmuth - 80 from 1637 to 2005
Kirby - 55 from 1840 to 1990
Buchheim - 52 from 1689 to 2000
Jones - 47 from 1838 to 1993
Schmitz - 38 from 1835 to 2001
Mills - 36 from 1714 to 1931
A tie for the 10th place between Spiri, Ernst, and Davis - 34 from 1786 to 2012.
I have 4266 names.

Anonymous said...

FTM 2011, usual routine (Surname Report, all individuals, sort by surname count). Found 2586 individual values for last name out of 10860 entries. The count is a little misleading, due to some of the conventions I use for unknown people that have to be there (e.g., I assign a number to the unknown parents of known siblings). With that caveat...

The top 8 surnames (those with counts over 100) are:

Liesse (395, 1550-2011)
Archer (241, 1793-1994)
[no surname] (210, 1080-1970)
Coburn (166, 1520-1848)
Williams (159, 1665-1997)
Winslow (133, 1595-1960)
Stevens (120, 1615-1998)
Buckmaster (119, 1774-1917)

This is all my and my ex-wife's families, but not all my research (much done by my grandmother and my ex-wife's aunt), so nobody should be particularly impressed!

Dave Liesse

Elf Flame said...

A link to my list and stats: http://ohspusch.blogspot.com/2013/03/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-surname.html

Bonnie said...

Using Family Tree Maker with 2589 individuals the top 10 surnames with counts are:

Shaw - 96
Kenney - 86
Dupler - 69
Gordon - 68
Mangold - 68
Voyce - 53
Thomas - 52
Smith - 48
McLeod - 44
Eisen - 40

Elizabeth Handler said...

I blogged about my results at From Maine to Kentucky.

genealogy in ireland said...

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Linda Schreiber said...

The RootsMagician probably has a better trick, but re counting given names, I created a custom report using only the field of given name. Then saved it as a text file. This creates a tab-delimited file.
Then I opened it in Excel, and sorted alphabetically.
Using the row numbers, and just a bit of arithmetic, I found I had 42 Johns, 17 Nathaniels, 11 Mathews, 36 Marys, 1 Bronce, etc. And a lot of Unknowns....