How to find what your surname means.
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How to find what your surname means.
| xxTedPackmf (View posts) | Posted: 8 Jan 2002 1:39AM GMT |
Classification: Query
Many of the posts here are from young people trying to find the meaning of their surname. Here are some hints that may help. They may not. They are easy, and worth a try.
Go to the Mormons genealogy site: http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp
Enter the surname alone, with no given name. If the hits you get are mostly from one country, that is probably where the surname originated. Remember that people moved around; there are a lot of Portuguese in Brazil, Spanish in Mexico and Germans in Wisconsin. Look for the older dates.
If the name is mainly from one country, and it isn’t British, see if it translates into English. Go to
http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
and select Portuguese, Spanish or German to English. If it translates (many don’t), you have your meaning.
Try a good search engine:
http://www.google.com/
Use the argument:
xxxx Surname Origin
Where “xxxx” is your surname. Google doesn’t need the plus sign or the word AND. You may get lucky here.
If none of these searches bear fruit, remember that most of you have at least four surnames to work with, one from each grandparent. If both your parents’ names were “Smith” before they married, you are stuck. Young people whose grandparents do genealogy have at least 112 surnames, but some people are luckier than others.
Go to the Mormons genealogy site: http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp
Enter the surname alone, with no given name. If the hits you get are mostly from one country, that is probably where the surname originated. Remember that people moved around; there are a lot of Portuguese in Brazil, Spanish in Mexico and Germans in Wisconsin. Look for the older dates.
If the name is mainly from one country, and it isn’t British, see if it translates into English. Go to
http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
and select Portuguese, Spanish or German to English. If it translates (many don’t), you have your meaning.
Try a good search engine:
http://www.google.com/
Use the argument:
xxxx Surname Origin
Where “xxxx” is your surname. Google doesn’t need the plus sign or the word AND. You may get lucky here.
If none of these searches bear fruit, remember that most of you have at least four surnames to work with, one from each grandparent. If both your parents’ names were “Smith” before they married, you are stuck. Young people whose grandparents do genealogy have at least 112 surnames, but some people are luckier than others.