How to research your family name
You'll be surprised with the kind of information you'll unearth
when you do a research on your own family name. People you've
never known existed, long-lost relatives, and friends who share
the same lineage as you! This is what researching your own
surname can do for you. If you're not ready for some surprise
findings, you're better off leaving all this researching to
others in your family.
Researching your own surname can be done through different
methods. For one thing, the most popular among all the other
methods of researching your own family surname is through the
Internet. The wide availability, freedom of use and flexibility
of the internet makes it the most popular genealogical research
tool known to humankind today! Try websites like
http://www.genealogy.com and you'll see what we mean. By typing
in your surname or your ancestor's first and last name, you'll
come up with a whole list of possible family members that you
can easily fill up your family tree. These tools are generally
easy to use and some websites even have communication tools
whereby you can contact the possible relative directly too.
These websites contain hundreds of millions of family names in
their database to help people find long-lost family members. And
if you use their tool and make a small contribution, you can use
their online tool or software to create a family tree. However,
for International users, you might have a bit of problem
researching your family name because most databases contain
popular family names widely used in the United States.
If you do not reside in the United States, here's what you can
do. Try going to your favorite search engine and typing 'Chinese
family name research' or 'Irish family name research' or 'Indian
surname genealogy research' into the search bar. You might come
up with some websites that can help you find out more about your
family surname within your locality. For Chinese surnames, try
http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F
%2Fgenforum.genealogy.com%2Fchina%2F. The forum is very active
and most importantly, the people in there are really helpful.
If that doesn't help, try
http://www.progenealogists.com/genealogysleuthi.htm where there
is a listing of different genealogy sleuths all around the
world.
Genealogy Sleuths are basically people who compile databases of
family names in certain areas and the biggest collection of
these databases are, of course, names and family names of people
residing in the United States.