Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- How Many Surnames In Your Family Tree Database?

It's Saturday Night -

time for more Genealogy Fun!

Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing is to:

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 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!!!

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.

Here's mine.

I use RootsMagic 8 and followed Randy’s instructions on how he did it, since I had not yet explored the reports part of the newest version of RootsMagic.

I have 42 pages of surnames when I create the alphabetical listing. With 40 names per page, 41 full pages brings 1640 surnames and the last page had 11 names, which brings the grand total of 1650 actual surnames, not including unknown names, which had 227 entries with no surname (all of those unknown maiden names).

By Frequency
Before I changed the sort to Sort by Frequency, I tried to guess which surnames would be at the top. Besides, no surname, I’d guess it would be either Loveless or Lancaster. These southern families had lots of children who had lots of children, and I have followed the lines back several generations.

I was right about Loveless and Lancaster being near the top. I forgot about Welch and Coor, also surnames that came from large families.

Top 20 family names: Red=Lisa’s maternal, Blue=Lisa’s paternal; Purple=Norman’s maternal, Green=Norman’s paternal.

Loveless: 221, ranging from 1766–2020
Welch: 188, ranging from 1662–2004
Lancaster: 163, ranging from 1715–2006
Coor: 149, ranging from 1715–2006
Gorrell: 105, ranging from 1770–2011
Bishop: 99, ranging from 1765–1990
Lundquist: 93, ranging from 1817–2013 (these are American names for Swedish ancestors)
Nilsen: 81, ranging from 1865–2019 (these are American names for Swedish ancestors)
Tierney: 71, ranging from 1777–1977
Selman: 69, ranging from 1680–1953
Sullivan: 63, ranging from 1811–2009
Johnston: 58, ranging from 1816–2009
Butler: 52, ranging from 1746–1914
Svensson: 47, ranging from 1682–2016
Shotts: 47, ranging from 1760–1958
Hutson: 46, ranging from 1801–2013
Rodgers: 44, ranging from 1818–1997
Davey: 43, ranging from 1807–2010
Nixon: 42, ranging from 1777–1934
Gleeson: 42, ranging from 1787–2013

My maiden name of Hork did not make the list, mostly due to the spelling variation. In America, it was Hork. In Westfalen, it was Horoch. If I add the two together, 35 and 26, it would fall between Johnston and Sullivan. 

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