Tonight’s challenge from Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musing’s blog is to run some surname statistics. I’m using RootsMagic to do my computations. As my tree is separated into three databases, I’ll use the Pacheco – de Braga database for this test. It’ll be the most impressive. LOL
While RootsMagic can give me a list of all the surnames in my database, it doesn’t appear that it can give me a total number of surnames. I’m not seeing it anyway. So, I’ll do this the long way. I’ve run the Surname Statistics List. It comes out to 31 pages. The total count is 1,647 surnames. This does not include the 389 people that I’ve yet to find a surname for.
My top ten surname list is…
Pacheco 229
Medeiros 211
Silva 111
Souza 107
Mello 104
Costa 89
Braga 85
Laniohan 85
Ferreira 73
Camara 72
Of course, since this is only one third of my tree, the numbers are slightly skewed. It saddens me to know that I have more people without a surname than are in my number #1 surname, Pacheco. It represents mostly women (366) who I know either by first name or no name at all. I’ve got to work on that!
