Genealogy Blog

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Three random name generators added

Sun, 12 Jan 2014 by Andrew

From now on you can use the random name generator on this website to help you create your perfect first, middle, or last names.

Share your data about surnames

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 by Andrew

The website now allows readers submit their our data about particular last names. Every name has a link to a corresponding submission form.

Featured in October/November 2013 internet-genealogy.com

Tue, 1 Oct 2013 by Andrew

Ray Cavanaugh published article "Profiling 150,000 Surnames" in Internet Genealogy magazine, in its October/November 2012 issue. I believe the article is available for readers already subscribed to the magazine. Hence, I cannot really a place a link here.

Where and when do I find 2010 Census surnames? Only 2 years since I asked this question last time...

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 by Andrew

Well, it is 2003 and to my great surprise there is still no official data from the US Census Bureau. They are yet to process the surnames from the data collected during the 2010 census efforts. They have the data, they just have not got around processing and publishing the surnames. This time I asked them about it to be sure. They promptly answered. Here is the US Census Bureau official response on where and when the 2010 surnames will become available.

"Thank you for using the US Census Bureau's Question & Answer Center. Due to limited resources, there are no plans to produce any surname files from the 2010 Census at this time."

I read it as if we are not going to get the latest list of surnames any time soon. I went as far as volonteering to do the work for them since they admit they lack resources to do it. I hope they either accept my help or find the resources to get the last names out to the public.

P.S. If you see anywhere on the internet any 2010 surname lists, trust me - they are not. Most likely they are just 2000 lists renamed by some "entrepreneurs." There is no official 2010 Census surname list at this point. It simply does not exist.

Website localization efforts

Fri, 9 Aug 2013 by Andrew

Officially Started website localization efforts todoy. So far it has only one language additional to English - Russian. And only th Articles pages are localized at the moment. But that is a start. Things will progress as time and resources allow. Also I will need to see how much interest there is for any of the localized information.

Added two new articles

Tue, 4 Jun 2013 by Andrew

One talks one more time about number of distinct names in the United States. There is 6+ millions according to the 2000 census results. The second article discusses some celebrity last names and mostly goes deep on why some celebrities end up changing their names.

1940 Census opening April 2, 2012 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 by Andrew

Please bookmark this page: http://www.1940census.archives.gov/ . This is where you will be able to access the digitized census records starting on April 2nd 2010. The digital images will be accessible free of charge at NARA facilities nationwide through our public access computers as well as on personal computers via the internet.

Added baby name statistices by states

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 by Andrew

There is a page for every state now that shows the ranks of the most popular baby names in a particular state. The data is provided by the Social Security Administration. It is aggregated on this web site by all avalable years.

Another web site to look at

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 by Andrew

There is one other web site we have been working in the recent times: http://www.genealogydig.com/ . Currently it has data on US and British counties and US genealogical societies. The more interesting and completepart of it is the USA counties: http://www.genealogydig.com/usa-counties.html . Every state map is augmented with the corresponding counties. You might have to wait few seconds while county data is being loaded.

Added a little over 6,000 English surnames

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 by Yulia

For the majority of these names 'meaning' informatin is available. The names are not part of the USA censuses. It is almost for certain that the names exist in the United States, but they are not mentioned in the census aggregated data since they are not very widespread, i.e. less than a 100 representetives for each name existed in 2000.

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