Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Word Cloud made with Tagul.com - thanks

This week Randy Seaver (over at Genealogy Musings) has a fun and easy Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. I hope everyone plays because this combines three of my favorite things - genealogy, Legacy Family Tree software, and surnames! So without further ado -

(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.

DONE 

(2) Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

I opened up my Legacy Family Tree version 8 software and selected the Reports Tab from the Legacy Toolbar. In Reports I selected the Statistics Report.

One of statistics if "Surname Statistics" which provides the total number of unique surnames, the 10 most popular (frequent instances) surnames, and most popular surnames by time period – with missing dates, used before 1500, between 1500-1599, between 1600-1699, 1700-1799, 1800-1899, 1900- 1999, and after 2000.

(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!!  Or 20!!!

Unique Surnames in my Family Tree – 1,442

And my Letterman (or Legacy) Top 10 list (number 1 being the most popular of frequent instances) is as follows:

10.          Morrissey

9.            Unknown

8.            Croy

7.            Cannell

6.            Kocevar

5.            Tracey

4.            Kavanaugh

3.            Shaughnessy

2.            Murphy

1.            Keough

(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.

Of course I have quite a few women whose maiden names I am still looking for (hence Unknown coming in at number 9). As to the rest of my top 10 - 6 of the surnames are on our Irish sides, 1 of the surnames is on our Slovenian side, 1 is a French surname married into the family, and 1 is a Manx surname married into the Murphy side.

So why not play SNGF and share your most popular surnames?