General Chat

a common surname?

Yes. Lots. Two of my grandparents were Smiths and I have several other direct ancestors who were Smiths plus Bell and Henderson in Scotland, Sullivan in Ireland, Collins and Mills in England. All very hard:)

I must be the exception as I only have one common surname in my tree......Well with a name like Posh what do you expect? lolol

Not been too bad so far ... but do have a surname that is very common around this area .... but I just chose all the poor ag labs for mine, and not the landowners, which seemed to work !! pmsl

Snap with Alice and the enumerators couldn't really care enough to be accurate with birth places as long as it began with Ll

x

I've got loads with really common forenames too, Ann, John, James, AAAHH!!

I have got the surname Scott in my tree, from the Gateshead/Newcastle area and there are 1000s of them. Its been complicated because both Ancestry and GR sometimes have Newcastle in Durham and Gateshead in Northumberland instead of the other way round. However I have got back to 1740 and considering my lot are all miners, shipbuilders, ag labs and domestic servants - that ain't bad !

Hill. James Hill.

You can probably tell that his son married a Bond. ;)

SMITH

From all directions on most blinky branches lol xx

Did you find any that were actually smiths ie blacksmiths etc?

Same here Lesley ... and all with the common surname here ... John, William Edward Alice etc etc lol

No not yet Lesley lol

Everything but actually xx

Thankfully I have some more unusual names, but 2 of these less common surnames are VERY common in the areas where my ancestors lived. I'm busy trying to sort out all the instances incase there's a link.

I have JONES on both sides of my family.... Welsh ones, English ones and English-who-moved-to-Wales ones.

....and as for the DAVIES who married DAVIES ,the JENKINS, and HUMPHRIES, ....well !

Gwyn

I have got some Brown's.

I have quite a few rare/unusual nams an the problem there is that nobody knew how to spell them! They are nearly always spelt differently than you expect.

Pat

I have a Smith, daughter of a Jones, who married a Tayler (often spelled Taylor). Needless to say that part of my tree is rather patchy :))

i got the opposite problem... so uncommon that they cant spell it,, so it could be anything!!!

Is Walker common enough?

Must have wished this on myself by starting this thread. Think I've found what happened to one of my missing ancestors after her husband died. Looks like she married.....wait for it..........













.........a Jones

Yes - one of my fairly common surnames - my dad's family - with spelling variations to boot.

AND to add insult to injury, my grandfather (b.1884) was never registered - nor were any of his siblings. And only two of the children were baptised.

So I still have no idea of my gr grandmother's maiden name. Plus her age varies too much in the census returns for me to be able to find her just by first name and place of birth .... so there is a HUGE gap in the chart and it makes me really really cross!

Mrs Grumpy

omg yessss lol

Smith and Jones !!! ..and Im not going down those branches lol

Mitchell ...getting there :) .......but the unusual ones are just as bad. Salmon aghghhhhh

Then theres the ones with differing spellings........mumbles , mutters pmsl