My Trails into the Past

This week’s 52 Ancestor’s theme is popular name. I wondered, what is the most popular first name in my genealogy database? It took some digging and counting to come up with the answer. I use RootsMagic 8. By using the Person Search-Advanced, I could search on the Given Name. I tried four common first names: Mary, John, William, and Elizabeth. The results are in reverse order: William has 58 entries. Elizabeth has 66 entries, including 10 with no known last name. Eliza has 6 entries. Mary has 91 entries, including 23 with no known last name. John has 97 entries. However, I realized that I was missing people who also had middle names, so I changed the criteria to “contain” the name. I got a different outcome: Elizabeth has 150 entries. William has 210 entries. John has 268 entries. Mary has 272 entries. Now there could be duplicates in John and William entries and in Mary and Elizabeth’s entries, if people had both as their first and middle name. It really boils down th...