Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Surnames?

From Randy Seaver at Geneamusings, this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun is counting unique surnames in our genealogy management program, whether software or online based.

I have 305 unique last names in my genealogy program.

Using Reunion, this is how I did this:

• Go into Reunion's "list" menu
• Select "last names"
  
• Select "all people"

The result, is a table that lists all unique last names, with a count of each, the earliest and most recent dates for each, and the number of living people with the name.

The top five surnames in my database are:

1. Worrall - 73 people - from 1719 to 2011
2. Greenleaf - 68 people - from 1652 to 2011
3. Cadwalader - 67 people - from 1677 to 2011
4. (tie) Adams - 40 people - from 1626 to 2011
5. (tie) Biddle - 40 people - from 1669 to 1945
6. (tie) Coolidge - 40 people - from 1728 to 1929
7. Fell - 35 people - from 1668 to 1961
8. Meigs - 33 people - from 1708 to 1905
9. Sharples - 32 people - from 1663 to 1851
10. Addams - 30 people - from 1746 to 1951

The list defaults to an alphabetical sort, but all columns are sortable in either ascending or descending order. The results can also be exported in a variety of formats. The default export is to a Word document, but there is also an option to export the surnames list as a tab-delimited text file, which enables it to be imported into a spreadsheet program like Excel.