Surname Study

[Pandabean]

Has anyone come accross the National Trust Surname maps & RootsMap? Have those sites been any use and is the data reliable?
When I tried some surnames where I know they were living nothing shows up on the NT site. Must be some sort of threshold on the names. I havent botherd with the RootsMap one as they like to charge for maps or a mousemat if your that way inclined.

I was thinking of doing my own maps of a surname but first does anyone out there have a blank image of Scotland and all the counties (eg Lothians split out into East, Mid & West)

Second has anyone had experience doing this with their own names?

What I was planning to do was count each occurence in each county on all the censuses so I have a picture every ten years. Secondly I was planning to use 10 year intervals for BMDs again per county to get an idea of the names prior to the census.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Might be a lengthy project.....

[LesleyB]

Hi Andy

Has anyone come accross the National Trust Surname maps

Yes, it has been around for good while under one or two different guises. The National Trust one is based on the LDS 1881 census transcription, as far as I remember, so there are errors; e.g. if a name is spelt incorrectly in the database, it will not show up. Also as they state on the site

To qualify for inclusion in this list there must have been at least one hundred entries under that family name in the Great Britain electoral register for 1996.

- so very rare names will not show. Also, I seem to remember some of the descriptions of the origins of some names were a bit simplistic and I'm not sure I'd rely on those - better to consult a copy of Blacks Surnames of Scotland for that I think.

I was thinking of doing my own maps of a surname but first does anyone out there have a blank image of Scotland and all the counties

See: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/ ... dPre74.ASP

Best wishes
Lesley

[Pandabean]

Hi Lesley, Thanks for the link to the map however I am looking for something more high quality and easy to select and fill. I have googled some but they all seem to poor to use. Its just a blank map with numbers and key preferably and not multi coloured, just plain black and white. Its always when you are looking for something you cant find exactly what you are looking for.

[jgmills]

Andy,

Don't know if this link will be of any use, it's free outline mapping of GB from Ordnance Survey.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsi ... index.html

John

[Pandabean]

Thanks John, I found one last night, bit of a sketchy outline with straight edges but it works, thanks to Wiki . After spending a good few hours last night on it, I finally plotted up my maps of the surname moving from each census and you can see the family gradually leaving aArgyll and moving into Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire as well as spreading eastwards to Midlothian and Fife, where my lot ended up.

Now the tricky part is to look at the family name from the OPRs and there are some interesting variations on the name that I have to think about.

Has anyone done a surname study? If so what else can you do apart from map the spread of the name across the country and the variations?

I would get Blacks Scottish Surname book but at £60 I might pass...

[Montrose Budie]

Much snipped...........

I would get Blacks Scottish Surname book but at £60 I might pass...

£60 !!!!

www.whsmith.co.uk have a split new hardback copy for £18.50 (+p&p I'd assume).

The current standard retail rice in the UK is £25.--

mb

[Pandabean]

I am assuming its this one, £75 now!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1874 ... d_i=468294

[Ina]

Andy, I have the Blacks book of surnames. Let me know what names you are looking for.

Ina

[Pandabean]

This is the map I am using

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/gaz ... d_map1.gif

Looks a bit straight in places but its the best I could find that would allow me to fill in areas easliy in photoshop. Didnt fancy redrawing a map as I have done in the past.

Also is there a place out there with good quality parish maps from around this time, mostly looking at Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Argyll & Midlothian.

Thanks Ina but I may get the one off of WHSmith as its something useful to have in the collection.

[AndrewP]

Hi Andy,

The parish maps that I use can be found at http://www.nls.uk/maps/counties/index.html .

The Ordnance Survey maps are very detailed, but would probably be of limited use for overlaying names onto as there is so much information already there.

All the best,

AndrewP