Julie Goucher ~ Anglers Rest

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The phrase X Marks the Spot is typical to denote where someone should sign their name or perhaps it denotes a pin mark on a map identifying where a particular location is.

So today I am going to chat about bringing to life the people who are in our own ancestral lines or people with whom we share no connection, but they bare the surname we are researching.

On occasions, when I am researching a family who appear in my One-Name Study I often have to remind myself that these were not my people, but fit into someone’s ancestry. So where do we stop researching?

Some One-Namer’s record the marriage between two people, one of whom appears in their study. Depending if the individual who bears the surname will depend on how far the line is followed. If the line is male it is easier to define, but a female poses a question and consideration.

The Guild offers no suggestion to this quandary and I personally follow the female line through to children and then what happens to those children. Sometimes there is a cross over between two studies, both registered with the Guild and in those instances I reach out to the other member and offer to do a reciprocal swap of information. That is one of the nicest things about the Guild – the friendly responses, connections and collaborations. To quote a former Chairman “members helping members” Families do often marry into each other, and sometimes more than once.

Whether these folk are our own ancestors or part of our study it is quite fascinating to follow someone’s life through their trials and tribulations and for us to attempt to understand all the details. If we are very lucky we connect with an ancestor of the person who perhaps shed further light on them or provide snippets of information.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Whether you write articles, Tweets, Facebook posts or a blog you are writing and publicising your study and fulfilling at least three of the Seven Pillar’s of Wisdom: the Art of One-Name Studies, published by the Guild in 2012. The book is also available from Amazon in Kindle format.

In the last few years I have written more and more about my own studies, and in particular about my Orlando study, Italian research and about the broad genre of surnames and surname research.

Here are a few articles I have written (in reverse order):

• All the posts relating to Surnames and One-Name Studies on this site can be found HERE
• The Pharos Tutors – What is your Oldest Possession? ~ 10 February 2018
• Journal of the Guild of One-Name Studies – From a Single Name – Beginnings of an Italian One-Name Study ~ Vol 13, Issue 1, pp 30-32 ~ Jan-March 2018 (Awarded the Guild of Award of Excellence)
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) – Setting up a One-Name Study ~ October 2017, pp 22 – 24
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) Blog – How to start a One-Name Study ~ April 2017
• Family Tree Magazine (UK) – My Genetic Journey (Case study as part of a DNA Exclusive guide) ~ February 2017, pp 48-49

You have nothing to loose by writing about your surnames. You may even find a connection to your family or someone else researching the surname. In some cases, including my Orlando study, our One-Name Studies and surname research is bound together with a One-Place Study and perhaps our cultural heritage.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

The topic of variants and deviants is addressed in detail during the Introduction to One-Name Studies course. Essentially we have likely all come across variants and deviants to our surnames, even if we have not called them that.

Variants

For the purposes of my own One-Name Studies I have registered two variants for ORLANDO, these are ORLANDE and ORLANDA. For my BUTCHER study I registered just one, BUTCHERS. It is also worth pointing out that you do not need to register a variant and at the initial point of registering the surname Butcher I did not register a variant. I did so when I came across a divorce record in the name of Butchers in which the male stated that his name was Butcher and not Butchers.

When looking at my husband’s ancestry his early Goucher ancestors were recorded as Goacher. The Goucher surname was listed as a variant in the Goacher One-Name Study when it was registered by another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies. When the study was deregistered, following the death of the registrant, my husband registered the surname and listed Goacher as a variant. He also added several other variants, one of which is the topic of a forthcoming post.

Deviants

A deviant is a change of surname that happens inconsistently. In the case of the 1939 Register, my husband’s Grandmother, was recorded as GROUCHER.

Why do variants exist?

Accents, spelling and people writing what they think they hear rather than what they actually do – Goucher is a case in point and I regularly receive correspondence in the name of Goucher and Groucher. In a letter recently, I was referred to as Goucher and Goacher, within the same sentence and that is not all, the envelope was handwritten and addressed to Mrs Groucher!

In a time when not everyone could read and write it was very easy for the inconsistencies with the spelling to exist because the person writing the surname would not be corrected if the person could not read what was written down.

Those with “foreign” surnames might change their surname, to make themselves fit in more and I gave an example recently. Surnames that have spellings that are not familiar in one country might become changed over time, just to be easier to manage.

You might find this page on the Guild of One-Name Studies website useful as you consider your own surnames and their potential variants. Those of you who read this post from earlier in the year might find it useful to read it again and consider the potential variant I discovered. I will at some point write about this again and my hypothesis about this.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Understanding our surnames is a really important element of any One-Name study. In much the same way as building a house, with the foundations first, a One-Name study is built and developed the same way.

In today’s post I am going to focus on Italian surnames and why they perhaps give us some insight.

There is nothing more frustrating than looking for your Italian ancestor on Census or document and where it says place of birth it simply says Italy. By understanding the surname, it perhaps gives us further clues.

Italian surnames are mostly derived from:

• Patronymics, meaning they are essentially from the male of the household, and that might include any variation to the name – such as Giovanni
• Geographical, based upon the place – such as Bulgari, Lazio, Sutera,
• Nicknames – and not always complementary ones – Grassi (big or fat), Forte (strong), Gambacorta (short leg), Gentile (Gentle)
• Occupational – Medici (Physician), Pastore (shepherd), Barbieri (barber)

Some spellings might determine a specific region:

• Those ending in isi as in Troisi, could indicate the family is from Neapolitan or Sicilian.
• Surnames ending aloro such as Favaloro are Sicilian surnames.
• Surnames ending igo such as Barbarigo are Venetian
• Those ending with utti such as Zanut are from Fiuli Venezia Giulia (on the border with Slovenia and Austria)
• Those ending iu such as Mongiu are Sardinian

Old records may also influence some surnames as they are converted from Latin to Italian and sometimes in to dialect. Later changes may have occurred as the are converted into English or Americanised – Giuseppe Pastore converts to Joseph or Joe Shepherd.

Those children who were foundlings often have a surname of the town where they were found, and were often stigmatised because of that. Later the ruling changed so that the children were given the name of another town, which of course didn’t help with the stigma issue either, especially if that surname did not exist significantly in the town. In these cases a DNA test might help.

We look at a number of the points raised here and especially over the last few posts (S for Synthesis and T for thinking about surnames) in the Introduction to One-Name Studies course.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Over the next two days we are going to be thinking about surnames. In many ways, T & U are not only linked together, but also to S for Synthesis.

The main question is What does my surname mean? There are a number of key surnames and where they originate can determine what kind of surname they are. You can read an earlier post HERE.

I have two studies, one for the surname of Butcher which is an occupational name. The other is for the surname of Orlando which suggests it is a Patronymic surname with links to Roland and Rowland. I am not entirely happy with the conclusions that I have drawn about this surname, but over the coming weeks I will discuss it more here. Incidentally, both of my One-Name Studies sites are deep under construction, I have 30 years of paper to process!

My husband has a study for the surname of Worship which was the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, I have always felt that the surname was very much linked to either a post holder name, someone who was connected with the church in some way and, having searched the Clergy of the Church of England Database there are a number of Worship entries as you can see below and some of them are quite early.

• Worship, Benjamin (1764-1764)
• Worship, James (1577-1585)
• Worship, John (1591-1599)
• Worship, John Lucas (1817-1834)
• Worship, William Taylor (1822-1832)
• Worshipp, William (1618-1618)

By thinking about your surname you are building up a profile about the surname, it’s origins and focus. Those factors give a One-Name study a good grounding and are these are discussed in the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and in the Guild publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of a One-Name Study, available from the Guild

I’ll be back to tomorrow talking about….

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Those of you who have been reading this site for a while may well recognise the image I shared a few days ago of the Seven steps of a One-Name Study. The third step is Synthesis and today we are going to explore what that means.

Synthesis is essentially taking the results of analysis and going a stage further, by giving some substance to your data, drawing conclusions about your surname.

You can do this by

• Exploring the meaning of your surname.
• Looking at the geographical origin of your surname – you might look at surname distribution maps for this stage.
• How and where possible variants to your surname came from.
• Looking at patterns of distribution – considering patterns of emigration and immigration, what caused those patterns of migration and was the migration permanent.

All these are discussed in the Pharos introduction to One-Name Studies course and in the Guild publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the Art of a One-Name Study, available from the Guild.

Over the next two days we are going to be thinking and understanding surnames in more depth, so I do hope you will continue to read along and perhaps share any instances that you have come across and your thoughts.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Material is coming online at a phenomenal rate and yet what is online is only a fraction of what is available. Just as with our own genealogical research, with a One-Name study you should review material:

• What material you already have
  • Including what the material tells you in terms of
    • other people
    • their address
    • their relationship to your ancestor
• What you are requiring
• Has the material you are requiring, but do not have yet been made available?
• Is there any new material that might help you confirm or disprove what you are hypothesising?

I keep an active workbook which has two worksheets:

• Research Log
  • What I looked at and where I looked at it
  • What did I find and what did I NOT find which is just as important
• To Do List
  • What do I need to look at next
  • Who does the material relate to. There is not point saying to look for Salvatore Orlando in New Orleans in 1930 if he has a son also called Salvatore, so I usually put the year of birth in brackets so I can distinguish one from other.
• As part of this workbook I also keep a notes sheet. This is where I might write a note, perhaps which does not relate to what or who I am looking for, but I want to capture the thought before it vanishes!

How often you review data will be up to you, perhaps you do it:

• When you see an announcement of the release of a data set online.
• Perhaps when you are working through your to do list.
• Perhaps as a result of an enquiry from another researcher.
• Perhaps in preparation of a pending research trip.

There is no hard and fast rule and I would recommend that you record when you search for material on your log, because it could be the case that you have searched over a period to time to find the material is not online, anywhere despite multiple searches and you perhaps need to engage the services of a genealogist to assist you. It might also be the case that the material you seek is simply not available and has been destroyed either as a deliberate act or it was created (or not) too long ago. There is also the possibility that the material is in an unsuspecting place.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

Every member of the Guild of One-Name Studies with a registered study has a profile page on the main Guild website.

The advantage of this is that when someone searches for the surname, if it is registered, the profile page is displayed. Some members have added lots of information about their study, the origins of the surname, the geographical spread. There are links to the website of the study and DNA project, if applicable.

I have written profiles for both of my studies, Orlando and Butcher both profiles are different in terms of content and depth. The Butcher profile is more of a work in progress and I should get this just how I want it sometime later this month (hopefully!).

The profile page is the shop window to your study. It enables people researching your surname to find you and the more details you add to your profile the more chance you have of receiving contact from others. To assist members I have provided this paper which can be downloaded

The webmaster gave a presentation at the February 2017 Guild seminar, which as titled a walk run around the website and there was time given to explaining how easy it was to produce and use member’s benefit. Members will find the recording in the members area under seminars and those undertaking the Pharos Introduction to One-Name Studies will see the link in their course material.

Once you have searched for a surname, using the search box on the right hand side of the Guild website and profile appears (if the surname is registered), if you look towards the bottom the website also lists the instances where the surname appears in the Guild indexes. Try doing a search for Butcher and see how many instances there are.

Created by Julie Goucher, 2023

I love the image below of the Seven Steps of a One-Name Study. The reason I like it so much is that it shows the seven key principles of a study and today’s post is about analysing material and what we observe.

One of the key elements as you commence or think of commencing a study is to look at the numbers. How big is your study going to be?

Courtesy of the Guild of One-Name Studies –  one-name.org

It is not simply a case of how big the study is, but how big the study is going to be in a specific genealogical location. My Orlando study is small in the UK, but across the English Channel and head to Italy and the surname is common. The surname occurs in other areas of Europe also. Then look to other locations, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

As we analyse the numbers I consider the driving factors of why the number might be higher in one country over another. I expected my Italian distribution map to show Orlando “everywhere” and I was not disappointed. I wrote about this earlier and you can read that post HERE the third map on the page shows the spread of Orlando’s.

When I compare the map to similar maps, such as for the United States, I can see the increase of the surname in certain states and then when I look at the history of Italy and in particular the south of the country I can see what perhaps drove the migration from those areas to the United States.

As part of analysing and observing, I could draw an initial conclusion that:

• Migration from a financially poor Italy, especially in the south was because there there was the hope of a better life in the USA.
• Some states, such as Alabama and Louisiana might have a surge in migrant populations because of the decrease in enslaved people and a deficit of people to do menial and hard labour work.
• Religion might also draw an increase in migration, so those from a devout Catholic country might choose to migrate to similar countries, Argentina and Brazil for example.
• The reduction in availability of migration to the United States might have driven an increase to other countries such as England and Australia.
• Sicily was famous for the incredibly hard work of sulphur mining, in fact in the 19th Century, 90% of the world’s sulphur mining came from Sicily. As the work decreased did this influence where the Sicilians migrated to?

All of these elements bring together our thought processes as we observe our findings and analyse them. If we give some context to the size of the study that builds a sounder approach to a study and adds a dimension to it.

For those who want to read more on the size of a study you could read this earlier post  here and I promise to write a post about some of my observations and see if my hypothesis holds water!