Saturday, February 8, 2020

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Top 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 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 a Facebook 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 of my list:


That took about 90 seconds and I have a 205 page list!  I didn't count every one of them - there are 205 pages with 39 names per page.  That's a grand total of about 7,990 surnames in my database with 56,110 persons.  The top 20 are, with birth date ranges:

*  SEAVER - 6,513 persons, from 1608 to 2019

*  [unknown] - 1,276 persons, from 747 to 2014
*  BUCK - 811 persons, from 1577 to 2014

*  SMITH - 797 persons, from 1543 to 2017
*  VAUX - 556 persons, from 1620 to 2015

*  DILL - 504 persons, from 1629 to 2014
*  SEVER - 496 persons, from 1673 to 2018
*  FITZ RANDOLPH - 482 persons, from 1420 to 1902
*  AUBLE - 377 persons, from 1770 to 2017
*  SEEVER - 347 persons, from 1749-2018

*  NEWTON - 341 persons, from 1600 to 2008
*  RICHMAN - 312 persons, from 1598 to 2004
*  CHAMPLIN - 304 persons, from 1615 to 1920*  BROWN - 300 persons, from 1580 to 2014
*  WHITE - 279 persons, from 1550 to 2015

*  CULVER - 264 persons, from 1700 to 2010
*  BRESEE - 256 persons, from 1650 to 1913
*  KEMP - 255 persons, from 1672 to 2017
*  HAWKINS - 219 persons, from 1570 to 2013
*  McKNEW - 218 persons, from 1640 to 2015

NOTE:  We've done this before. See  Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Top 10 (or 20) Surnames in Your Family Tree  (on 21 October 2017) for the last time we did this for SNGF.  My list has changed a little since I have added 7,235 persons since then, including 1,149 SEAVER and 340 SEEVER persons.  SEEVERS (194), SEAVERS (167), SEVIER (129) and SEVERS (29) didn't make the Top 20 list yet, but I have added quite a few of them also.  

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The URL for this post is:   https://www.geneamusings.com/2020/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-top-20.html

Copyright (c) 2020, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

7 comments:

Liz said...

Here's mine, Randy!

gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2020/02/from-randy-over-at-genea-musings-its.html

I had not done this exercise back in 2017 so it was enlightening!

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

We had done this in 2017, so I was able to make a comparison from then to now.

https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2020/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-top-20.html

Lois Willis said...

Here's mine

https://loiswillis.blog/2020/02/09/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-top-20-surnames-in-your-family-tree/
I had done similiar posts in 2015, 2016 and 2017

Seeds to Tree said...

I posted my answer here.
http://seedstotree.blogspot.com/2020/02/randy-seavers-saturday-night-fun.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here are my top names. Little change in the numbers from last time. https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2020/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-78/

Life Goes On said...

I went to my Roots web and printed out my form. I stopped at 12 names since I feel my Roots Web is not up to date. I do connect my roots web to ancestry but must be doing something wrong. I ams sure I have a lot more information in my ancestry than rootsweb program. I tend to work on ancestry and then connect the two but I must be doing something wrong. I am open to any suggestions and help. If you have any ideas please post on my blog post. Thank you all.

https://myfamilyrootsrundeep.blogspot.com/2020/02/saturday-night-fun-with-randy-seaver-my.html

Marian B. Wood said...

Hi Randy, another good challenge that taught me more about the reports in RootsMagic. Plus I have a great photo of my husband's grandfather at the wheel of his 1917 Ford (in 1917) to illustrate the WOOD family tree for this post. https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/02/sepia-saturday-and-saturday-night-genea.html