The Surname Society

The Surname Society is a proposed new group which would permit you to register a surname in a specific area. You would also be able to have a group of people working on one surname. Also being discussed is the ability to set up a name "society" with a page to encourage the development of a registered society in a particular surname.

The interested people behind this new group (including myself) have prepared a questionnaire to survey possible information in its formation. If the group launches, it will be complimentary to and not competitive with the Guild of One-Name Studies. I would certainly continue my membership with the Guild and my two one name-studies of Blake and Pincombe.

The benefit for me would be to have all of my researchers (five in number thus far) working together in an organization; i.e. the webpage would have all of our names and our areas of interest although I would remain the person to whom one would write if not in those other four particular areas. I could also set up a "Blake Society" webpage with the intent of attracting people to the idea of a Society that could eventually register itself. I could also register a couple of my surnames for which I have only a localized interest like Cheatle, Buller and a few others.

The benefit for everyone would be the ability to find and work with like minded people in your surname of interest but without the commitment of taking on a worldwide study.

Where do I see this group going if we feel there is a call for its creation? I see it as the "goto place" for surname societies - an umbrella group - where you could have a single page set up to introduce people to your group and links back to your website. I see it as the home of many many smaller surname studies that will never move much beyond the village, town, city, county where the name bearers have resided rather than a collection of all the instances of a surname worldwide. 

The questionnaire is here:

http://surname-studies.org/