{"id":2022,"date":"2012-10-26T15:27:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2012-10-26T15:28:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T15:28:42","slug":"genealogy-search-tips-for-ancestors-names-less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/genealogy-search-tips-for-ancestors-names-less-is-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy Search Tips for Ancestors\u2019 Names: Less Is More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beginning genealogists sometimes write us and say: \u201cI put in the correct information for my search\u2014full name including middle name, birth date, last known place of residence, etc.\u2014everything I know about my ancestor, and yet I found no matching records. I did this search for a few other ancestors after I was told that there was no record of death. I have seen these names on the Social Security Death Index before. How come I can\u2019t find that information now?\u201d<\/p>\n

Be flexible in your ancestor name search<\/strong><\/p>\n

What you want to do is limit your family searches to the basic, essential information, typing in just enough to find your target ancestor without getting back too many hits.<\/p>\n

For example, your ancestor\u2019s full name might have been John Henry Thompson\u2014but the editors of the newspaper simply called him \u201cBif Thompson,\u201d the name he was known by in the community for the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

The Social Security Death Index has records for 4,266 persons with the first name \u201cBuddy,\u201d 25,947 records with the first name \u201cTommy,\u201d and one record for a person named \u201cBif.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Bif, Buddy and Tommy just might be the first name on their birth certificates, but it is more likely that these are a nickname or the diminutive form of their formal name (for example, \u201cTommy\u201d for \u201cThomas.\u201d)<\/p>\n

When these people\u2019s names are indexed there is no way to know that \u201cBif Thompson,\u201d for example, was actually \u201cJohn Henry Thompson.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are over 1.3 billion names in GenealogyBank, and we index them exactly as the names appeared in the original record. So you want to be flexible in how you search for a name.<\/p>\n

Search using only your ancestor\u2019s surname, limited by date range if necessary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most surnames are unique. You will learn by genealogy research experience if a search using only a surname will generate too many hits. If it does, then limit your search by a range of years\u2014for example: 1950\u20131975. That will usually enable you to pull up just enough search result hits so that you can locate your target ancestor.<\/p>\n

\"picture<\/a>
GenealogyBank search form for surname “Starbird” between the years 1950-1975<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By searching for all persons surnamed Starbird from 1950\u20131975, you will then find all of those records regardless of whether the editor included their first name, middle name, initials, or nicknames.<\/p>\n

Give the surname search, limited by date ranges, a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beginning genealogists sometimes write us and say: \u201cI put in the correct information for my search\u2014full name including middle name, birth date, last known place of residence, etc.\u2014everything I know about my ancestor, and yet I found no matching records. I did this search for a few other ancestors after I was told that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[2605,4,5302,1129,1658,2233,465,27,5370,5426,5430,2601,2232,844,1178,5446,5447],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-ancestors","tag-birth","tag-death","tag-family","tag-family-history-2","tag-family-research","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-newspapers","tag-people","tag-records","tag-research","tag-search-forms","tag-search-tips","tag-social-security","tag-surnames","tag-thomas","tag-thompson"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}