Our "Other" Family

Birth, Marriage, Death

Moderator: Global Moderators

emanday
Global Moderator
Posts: 2927
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 12:50 am
Location: Born in Glasgow: now in Bristol

Post by emanday » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:06 pm

Yes :D One of my friends has given up (almost) looking for a Reid when she knows which area, but not the parish and has a +-2 years spread to cover.

She showed me what happens there. She'd use up all 30 credits, no problem! Has SP ever thought of a MAX/MIN number of letters as a search option? I used to include that in many of the databases I designed.
[b]Mary[/b]
A cat leaves pawprints on your heart
McDonald or MacDonald (some couldn't make up their mind!), Bonner, Crichton, McKillop, Campbell, Cameron, Gitrig (+other spellings), Clark, Sloan, Stewart, McCutcheon, Ireland (the surname)

DavidWW
Posts: 5057
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:47 pm

Post by DavidWW » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:28 pm

emanday wrote:Yes :D One of my friends has given up (almost) looking for a Reid when she knows which area, but not the parish and has a +-2 years spread to cover.

She showed me what happens there. She'd use up all 30 credits, no problem! Has SP ever thought of a MAX/MIN number of letters as a search option? I used to include that in many of the databases I designed.
Mary

There is a limit on SP, currently two characters, with a leading wildcard allowable (most unusual for such databases, BTW), but if the number of hits found by the SP search engine is too many, then there may be an error message to that effect, - and the shorter the surname to start with, the greater the chance of such an error message.

For REID, I'd start off with RE?D, then try for R?ED (transcription of the vowels), and then have a go at RE?D* ............

After that I'd have a look at the Namex© system at http://www.originsnetwork.com/namex/aboutnamex.html , and have a long think about which variants wildcard searches to date hadn't picked up. There's a free trial at http://www.namethesaurus.com/Thesaurus/ .... and some of the 168 Namex© variants for REID might give your friend food for thought (never mind the other aspect of which other surnames might have been erroneously heard and recorded as REID and cognate ..... :twisted: )

David

emanday
Global Moderator
Posts: 2927
Joined: Tue May 30, 2006 12:50 am
Location: Born in Glasgow: now in Bristol

Post by emanday » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:42 pm

I just cut and pasted that to her on Messenger and got the reply...

"Good God woman, what do you think I am? A mathematician?"

But this was closely followed by "Mind you, got to give the man credit - he has got a point. I'll have another go" :D
[b]Mary[/b]
A cat leaves pawprints on your heart
McDonald or MacDonald (some couldn't make up their mind!), Bonner, Crichton, McKillop, Campbell, Cameron, Gitrig (+other spellings), Clark, Sloan, Stewart, McCutcheon, Ireland (the surname)

DavidWW
Posts: 5057
Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:47 pm

Post by DavidWW » Sun Aug 20, 2006 12:02 am

emanday wrote:I just cut and pasted that to her on Messenger and got the reply...

"Good God woman, what do you think I am? A mathematician?"

But this was closely followed by "Mind you, got to give the man credit - he has got a point. I'll have another go" :D
Mathematician?!, - no way, ken, but logician I could live with :!: :wink:

David