Members' Interests Database

We want you to get the most out of the Members’ Interests database. The following guidance will help you to achieve this.

 

Contact Consent

To make use of our Members’ Interests Database you will need to have given consent for your contact details to be shared with other members. You check and change your consent at any time whist logged in, by visiting My Account.

 

Your Database Entries

You may view, edit and add your list of surnames at any time whist logged in, by visiting My Account.

When adding surnames you do not need to list variants of each name, as a wildcard search will display variations (see below).

Place names and dates should be as specific as you can be. Simply stating the County name and “All centuries” is not helpful, unless you have a rare surname and there is a risk that other members might pass over your entry.

Only interests within the United Kingdom are listed on our database, so the County options are restricted to that geographic area.

Counties are listed by Chapman Codes, although our drop-down list is not in strict alphabetical order. Please let us know if you are unable to find a particular county.

Hint – The easiest way to find your county is to keep hitting the first letter until yours comes up, for example, for Monmouthshire, keep pressing the M key continually and eventually it will display as ‘(MON) Monmouthshire’.

If you have conducted a One-Name Study, in the last column, select the appropriate entry from the drop-down list for the surname(s) you have entered. Then save the page. See below for more information about One Name Studies.

 

Searching the Database

The database can be found under the Members tab on our home page.

Enter a Surname or first part thereof. The character % may be used as a wildcard for the start or end of a name. This search will also return any names which are part of a One Name Study. You can also narrow the search by county.

 

Click on the View Member tab against an entry and you will see a list of that member’s interests and their elected contact details, so that you can connect with that member regarding your shared interest. 

The search result show below also indicates that the member has conducted a One Name Study. 

You may search further against any of their surnames using the Search On This Entry tab.

Publicising Members’ Interests

When a member first joins us, subject to their consent given, we will publish their details and Surnames Interests in the next journal following their joining.

Some members prefer for us not to advertise their membership but may still have added their surnames to the database.

It is therefore advisable to make periodic searches of your names against the database – you may find new entries that are relevant to your ancestors.

 

One Name Studies

These fall into two types, depending on their scope and whether registered with the Guild Of One Name Studies (GOONS). GOONS members have to commit to a world-wide responsibility for a name. You can visit their web site here.

More localised, unregistered studies (such as the example shown above). Our expectation is that the members listed are interested in all references to their associated Surname on the Island and have built up (or will build up) a database of knowledge to share with others. In turn, this may encourage others to contribute their knowledge to the one-name specialist.

New members interested in these names will have a great source of knowledge to get them going quickly.