From the author of The Family Tree Detective, this guide provides the
amateur genealogist or family historian with the skills to research the
distribution and history of a surname. Colin Rogers uses a sample of 100
names, many of them common, to follow the migration of people through
the centuries. Each of the 100 names is mapped since the Doomsday book
in 1086. For those whose name is not among the sample, the book shows
how to find out where namesakes live now, how they moved around the
country through time, and how the name originated from a placename, a
nickname or an occupation. Colin Rogers finishes this work by showing
how the distribution of surnames can be studied irrespective of the size
of the surrounding population, and reaches some interesting conclusions
about which names are more reliable guides to migration since the 14th
century.