I did a radio interview on Monday 15th July for the WMNF station in Tampa, Florida. I appeared on the Life Elsewhere programme hosted by Norman B. I got the chance to talk a little bit about my Cruwys DNA Project and my surname research. There is a synopsis of the programme here:
http://lifeelsewhere.co/2013/07/13/whats-your-name
I appeared on the programme with my genealogy friends Dick Hill, the author of Finding Family, and Drew Smith, whose new book Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques, written with George Morgan, is due out in the US in September. The programme is now available online and can be heard here:
http://sound.wmnf.org/sound/wmnf_130715_090618_life1_391.MP3
My segment with Norman and Drew starts at around 27 minutes.
Showing posts with label Surnames. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surnames. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
The Surnames Handbook
I've just received an advance copy of my new book The Surnames Handbook from the History Press. It's very exciting to see it in print at long last and it is looking really good. The book is now available from the History Press and should be arriving in bookshops, Amazon and other online stores in the next week or so. It will be a few more months before it becomes available in the US, Australia and other countries and I don't yet have a firm publication date. There will also be a Kindle edition.
This is essentially the book that I would have liked to have had available when I started out on my own surname research. It's intended as a practical guide to all the different aspects of surname research, but I've also provided some background on surnames in general, drawing on the research from all the many different disciplines that are now involved in surname research, emphasising in particular the contribution that can be made by the family historian. The focus is on surnames of the British Isles. I would very much have liked to have written more but I was restricted to a maximum of 85,000 words and I ran out of both space and time! The book includes links to hundreds of relevant websites, an extensive bibliography, and numerous detailed appendices with information on all the essential resources for a surname study both online and offline. The text is supported by a long list of 190 references. The contents are listed below. I hope you like it!
Foreword by Derek Palgrave, President of the Guild of One-Name Studies
Introduction
Chapter 1: The history of surnames
Chapter 2: The classification of surnames
Chapter 3: Variants and deviants
Chapter 4: Surname mapping
Chapter 5: Surname frequency
Chapter 6: Has it been done before?
Chapter 7: Laying the foundations - the key datasets
Chapter 8: Surname origins - pre-1600 resources
Chapter 9: DNA and surnames
Chapter 10: One-name studies
Appendices
Appendix A: Genealogy websites
Appendix B: Surname websites
Appendix C: Lay subsidy rolls
Appendix D: Organisations and journals
Appendix E: Linguistic resources
Appendix F: Place-name resources
Appendix G: Population statistics
Bibliography
© Debbie Kennett 2012
Thursday, 7 June 2012
The Surnames Handbook
Surnames have effectively taken over my life for the last year, and in the last couple of months I've been working on this book for very long hours seven days a week. When I accepted the suggestion of writing the book I hadn't realised quite what a marathon task it would be, simply because I hadn't quite anticipated the sheer volume of literature that had already been published on the subject. It's been a huge amount of work but I'm pleased with the way the book has turned out.This is essentially the book that I would have liked to have had available when I started out on my own surname research. It's intended as a practical guide to all the different aspects of surname research, but I've also provided some background on surnames in general, drawing on the research from all the many different disciplines that are now involved in surname research, emphasising in particular the contribution that can be made by the family historian. The book includes links to hundreds of relevant websites, an extensive bibliography, and numerous detailed appendices with information on all the essential resources for a surname study both online and offline. The text is supported by a long list of 190 references. The contents are listed below.
Foreword by Derek Palgrave
Introduction
Chapter 1: The history of surnames
Chapter 2: The classification of surnames
Chapter 3: Variants and deviants
Chapter 4: Surname mapping
Chapter 5: Surname frequency
Chapter 6: Has it been done before?
Chapter 7: Laying the foundations - the key datasets
Chapter 8: Surname origins - pre-1600 resources
Chapter 9: DNA and surnames
Chapter 10: One-name studies
Appendices
Appendix A: Genealogy websites
Appendix B: Surname websites
Appendix C: Lay subsidy rolls
Appendix D: Organisations and journals
Appendix E: Linguistic resources
Appendix F: Place-name resources
Appendix G: Population statistics
Bibliography
© Debbie Kennett 2012
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Family Names in the UK project
Back in April I attended the Guild of One-Name Studies conference in Warrington, Cheshire. This is the first time I have attended a Guild conference. It was a very enjoyable weekend and gave me the opportunity to catch up with some of my friends from the Guild and to make some new friends as well. One of the highlights of the conference was the talk by Dr Patrick Hanks on the exciting new Family Names in the UK Project (FanUK) at the University of the West of England (UWE) which aims to create the largest ever database of the UK's family surnames and make the results available online. Dr Hanks is an eminent lexicographer who is best known for his work on A Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford University Press, 1988) and the three-volume Dictionary of American Family Names (Oxford University Press, USA, 2003). He is now the lead researcher on the Family Names project, and is working in collaboration with Professor Richard Coates from the Bristol Centre for Linguistics at UWE. The Family Names project aims to explain the origins, history and geographical distribution of all family names in Britain that have more than one hundred current name-bearers. The database will also include stub entries for recent immigrant surnames such as Patel which is now the 32nd most common surname in Britain. In addition the project will also include surnames listed in Reaney and Wilson with between one and one hundred living name-bearers (P H Reaney and R M Wilson. A Dictionary of English Surnames. Routledge Hardback Edition, 1976; Oxford Paperback Reference, 2005). Dr Hanks explained that Reaney and Wilson's book was a heroic achievement for its time, but with the benefit of today's sophisticated resources it has become apparent that over 40% of their explanations are untenable. In addition, over 20,000 well-established English and Scottish surnames such as Adshead and Blair are missing entirely from Reaney and Wilson.
The project hopes to have entries on 40,000 names available online by April 2014. In addition, they have a further 150,000 names on the reserve list. A questionnaire in electronic form will be prepared for members of the Guild of One-Name Studies who will be invited to answer questions about their registered surname(s). The questionnaire will be carefully structured so that the researchers get the answers they are seeking rather than the information that Guild members might like to provide!
The project will record the names and dates of the earliest known name-bearers for each surname and an attempt will be made to link these references to modern forms. The frequency and distribution of each surname in the present day and in 1881 will also be recorded. Steve Archer's British 19th-Century Surnames Atlas is being used to map the distribution of surnames in 1881. One of the key resources to be used for early surname references is Carolyn Fenwick's 14th-century Poll Tax Returns (The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, three volumes, Oxford University Press, 1988). This seminal work serves as a proxy census of 14th-century Britain. Fenwick published an index of place names and a glossary of occupations, but ran out of steam and no surname index was ever published, making it a time-consuming exercise to extract data on a single surname and its variants. The UWE team have applied to the British Academy for funding for a project to create a personal names index to the Poll Taxes which, if approved, will be a valuable resource for surname researchers. Carolyn Fenwick is now retired and living in Australia but she has kindly donated her database to the researchers at the UWE.
For later surname references the project will rely on a mixture of primary data sources and the IGI. The project is currently working with Family Search to standardise the place names used in the IGI. Members of the Guild have also been invited to get involved in this project and are now in the process of checking place names in each county and "quarantining" place names which cannot be found in other sources.
The Family Names Project currently has no plans to incorporate genetic data from DNA projects. However, Dr Hanks attended Chris Pomery's talk at the conference on "The Value of DNA Projects to One-Name Studies" and he was particularly interested in the way that DNA projects have uncovered genetic matches with different surname variants such as the link between the names Crews and Screws which has been found in my own project. He was also intrigued to learn that Guild member Alan Moorhouse had a DNA match with someone with the surname Morris. Dr Hanks has asked us for suggestions as to how genetic data could be incorporated in the project, and is arranging to discuss the matter further at a meeting in Bristol with Chris Pomery which I'm also hoping to attend.
The project hopes to have entries on 40,000 names available online by April 2014. In addition, they have a further 150,000 names on the reserve list. A questionnaire in electronic form will be prepared for members of the Guild of One-Name Studies who will be invited to answer questions about their registered surname(s). The questionnaire will be carefully structured so that the researchers get the answers they are seeking rather than the information that Guild members might like to provide!
The project will record the names and dates of the earliest known name-bearers for each surname and an attempt will be made to link these references to modern forms. The frequency and distribution of each surname in the present day and in 1881 will also be recorded. Steve Archer's British 19th-Century Surnames Atlas is being used to map the distribution of surnames in 1881. One of the key resources to be used for early surname references is Carolyn Fenwick's 14th-century Poll Tax Returns (The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, three volumes, Oxford University Press, 1988). This seminal work serves as a proxy census of 14th-century Britain. Fenwick published an index of place names and a glossary of occupations, but ran out of steam and no surname index was ever published, making it a time-consuming exercise to extract data on a single surname and its variants. The UWE team have applied to the British Academy for funding for a project to create a personal names index to the Poll Taxes which, if approved, will be a valuable resource for surname researchers. Carolyn Fenwick is now retired and living in Australia but she has kindly donated her database to the researchers at the UWE.
For later surname references the project will rely on a mixture of primary data sources and the IGI. The project is currently working with Family Search to standardise the place names used in the IGI. Members of the Guild have also been invited to get involved in this project and are now in the process of checking place names in each county and "quarantining" place names which cannot be found in other sources.
The Family Names Project currently has no plans to incorporate genetic data from DNA projects. However, Dr Hanks attended Chris Pomery's talk at the conference on "The Value of DNA Projects to One-Name Studies" and he was particularly interested in the way that DNA projects have uncovered genetic matches with different surname variants such as the link between the names Crews and Screws which has been found in my own project. He was also intrigued to learn that Guild member Alan Moorhouse had a DNA match with someone with the surname Morris. Dr Hanks has asked us for suggestions as to how genetic data could be incorporated in the project, and is arranging to discuss the matter further at a meeting in Bristol with Chris Pomery which I'm also hoping to attend.
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