Time once again for some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. This week’s topic from Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings is to figure out how many surnames are in our family trees?
Thankfully, there was no need to count them all by hand on a pedigree chart, as RootsMagic 7 has a surname statistics list that did all the work for me.
I have 1,692 surnames in my family tree. Here are the surnames with the most family members in them and this didn’t really surprise me at all, given that some took a lot of collateral research to piece together, some are families from which I descend 2, 3 or even 4 times and a few are just very common surnames.
- Adams – 132 people in the tree
- Carlisle – 98
- Coleman – 86
- Tarbox – 80
- Hicks – 78
- Bucknam – 72
- Molin – 69
- Brown – 65
- Haskell – 66
- Wilson – 64
- Scerbak – 62
- Burt – 60
- Redding – 59
- Patorai – 56
- Parker – 53
- Wheeler – 51 – Tie
- Lakin – 51 – Tie
- Smith – 50
- Pratt – 49
- Scripture – 47
My husband’s family tree has slightly more names – 1,749 and there is but a single duplicated surname in the list (Smith) when compared to my family tree and, no, the Smith families are not related at all.
- Williams – 744 people in the tree
- Miller – 154
- Fritts – 133
- Pryor – 130
- Nation – 89
- Stufflebean – 67
- Mahon – 66
- Woodruff – 61 – Tie
- Spear – 61 – Tie
- Brasher – 57
- Hudnall – 56
- Smith – 54
- Nance – 54
- Brown – 51
- Jones – 50
- Davis – 47
- Bandy – 46
- Sturgell – 45 – Tie
- Lewis – 45 – tie
- Shoemaker – 42
In my family tree, there are four surnames which I would consider unique in terms of one progenitor – Tarbox, Bucknam and Scripture in colonial America and Patorai in Slovakia.
In my husband’s tree, the only unique name is Stufflebean. All of the Stufflebeans/Stufflebeams are related as far as I can tell.
What surnames are in your family trees?
Mary, what a great idea!
I like that idea, too.