1 week COVID freebie

+12 votes
180 views

Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/lifestyle/family-relationships/surnames-dictionary-goes-free-for-family-bonding-in-lockdown/ar-BB146iN1?ocid=spartanntp

Based on modern research and far superior to the junk in the old books, which were mostly just guesswork without looking at evidence.

One week only, it says.

in The Tree House by Living Horace G2G6 Pilot (624k points)
Interesting; I like the maps showing distribution of the name.

Thanks for posting!
Dunno about the "far superior": one of its sources is apparently the IGI, a.k.a. those old error-ridden indexes on FamilySearch. And it really depends on *which* "old book" you're talking about....
IGI was a good source for pre-industrial distribution of surnames.  It could show where a name was common in one part of the country and rare everywhere else.  Sometimes it could show a name spreading outwards from a small area.

The old books generally made no attempt to obtain or use distribution data.  So often their theories and conjectures make no sense when you see a distribution map.

I've come to the point of really just not trusting the IGI. Take for example "Lilian" before 1650 in England -- I've now gotten a look at the images for nearly every instance in the index, and not a single one of them is actually Lilian. Most are Gilian, one is Alice, one is Lettice, and one is Susan.

1 Answer

+6 votes

Thank you! I found some proof other than an Ancestry hint for 

Walter de Brokweye, 1255 in Hundred Rolls (Wilts); William Brockway, 1588 in PROB 11 (Donhead Saint Mary, Wilts); John Brockway, 1663 in IGI (Reading, Berks).  smiley He’s not in my tree here yet, but I’m getting there. 

by Alice Glassen G2G6 Mach 5 (57.2k points)

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