Your names – meanings of given names and surnames

March 5, 3:24 PMGenealogy and Technology ExaminerThomas MacEntee

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In case you missed it, this is Celebrate Your Name Week which was created so people could learn more about their names and perhaps more about themselves.

As a genealogist, my research and my genealogy database are littered with names – both common and uncommon.  I have also noticed that names that were popular in the 1860s or 1930s would probably merit scorn or be scoffed at these days.  Admit it, names like Elmer, Elijah, Mehitable, Thankful and Huldah would likely cause people to take notice if used for a newborn in 2009.  But these names – all used by some of my own ancestors – were popular back in their day.

Here are some tools you can use to investigate the meaning of names – both given (first name) and surname (last name) – and track their popularity/demographic information:

• Behind the Name: billing itself as a site listing the “etymology and history of first names,” this site offers a list of current popular names broken down by country.  I also find the Name Days feature popular since in my family the names day of the saint for whom you were named is celebrated as much as your birthday.
  
  
• PublicProfilers/worldnames: this useful tool lets you search for a surname and then view its demographics. 
  
  
• dynsatree: see how a surname is distributed across the United States.  This site also has a great tool: names that sound like the surname you enter.  I’ve used this to look for alternate spellings when working on my own genealogy.
  
  
• 18^th and 19^th Century Nicknames: from the Connecticut State Library, this listing can help decipher nicknames used on census rolls or other documents.
  
  
• Popular Baby Names: learn the top 10 given names for each year in the United States going all the way back to 1879, based on Social Security Administration data.

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