Alas Smith and Jones, what to do when you hit a common surname.

You’re happily working away on your family tree of Brocklehursts, Culpeppers, Treharnes and MacKinleys when you suddenly find a maiden name of Taylor, Brown, Davies or the eponymous Smith or Jones. Do you throw your hands up in horror and give in, or redouble your efforts?

This problem has always affected researchers in Wales where most of the population have a surname that could be described as common. John and Sheila Rowlands in their book The Surnames of Wales quote the Registrar General, George Graham, who presented a report to Parliament in 1856 as saying that 90% of the population of Wales would answer to less than 100 surnames. And the statistics definitely back up his claim.

So what should you do? Check, double check and then check again. Look sideways, and look at diverse records. Does your ancestor John Davies have a brother or sister with an unusual first name? Uriah, or Bramwell, or Hephzibah? Did they have an unusual occupation that you can follow? Can you try to make any predictions on family names from the naming pattern they have used for their children? Did they leave a will naming property or other members of the family? Learn as much as you can about the era and area they lived in.

I started tracing my Welsh family many years ago and I would tell others I was tracing in Wales and they would say are you mad? There are definitely challenges and in a way I was lucky that I still had elderly relatives to speak to, however that too had its problems. I asked my elderly great aunts, where in North America their Uncle John had gone to in 1928 and I got 5 different answers! Variation in surname spelling is also a problem. My surname HARRIES can be HARRIS, HARRIES, HARRY, HARRISS or HARRYS to name a few. The most recent known different spelling in my own research on an official document is that of my great grandmother’s death in 1961, so do not always assume that more recent is necessarily more accurate.

Why do the Welsh have this paucity of surnames?

Most Welsh surnames are patronymics, their origin is from a first name, with or without the preceding word Ap, son of. Jones comes from the first name John (as does John and Johns), Phillips comes from Phillip, Bevan (Ap Evan) and Evans from Evan, Pugh (Ap Hugh) and Hugh and Hughes come from Hugh and Bowen, Owen from Owen and Powell and Howell from Hwyel. I highly recommend John and Sheila Rowlands book The Surnames of Wales for further in depth information on the subject.