Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Surnames?

Tonight's challenge from Randy Seaver is to:

1)  Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3)  Tell us how many surnames, and if possible, which surname has the most entries.  If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5!

4)  Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

My preferred genealogy program is Family Tree Maker 2011 (FTM 2011). I used the Surname Report, found in the Publish workspace under Person Reports.

 

 

The Surname Report is a new feature in FTM 2011 and I had never used it before tonight, so I found this week's challenge particularly interesting.

From the Surname Report Options, I selected the options:

• All Individuals
• Sort by surname count
• Show divider between surnames

 

 

 

This report gave me 27 pages containing 35 surnames, plus a 28th page containing 24. (35 X 27) + 24 = 969, so I have a total of 969 surnames in my database of 4,859 people.

The most common surname in my database is my maiden name, Bentley. The table below shows the top ten surnames, including the breakdown between males and females and the earliest and most recent dates for each surname: