Origination of Surname... website wanted

[cranberryjampot]

Anyone know a good site to look up origination of a surname?

Have asked dh and neither of us know - sorry. Hope someone else does tho' as I would be interested.

cranberryjampot - Have you tried Google at all? I did this with one of my family history surnames, thinking it was unusual, and found lots of references there. Admittedly, I didn't bother wading through them to see if I could find the origin. I was pretty certain of the origin as there's a village of that name a few miles away from where they lived in the 1700s.

Don't know if these are any help but it's a start

Free Surname Search
Access thousands of free genealogy databases and record transcriptions
FreeSurnameSearch.com

Ancestors & Family Trees
The No 1 UK genealogy website Millions of records - Free access
www.genesreunited.co.uk

1901 Census for England
and Wales. Search for people and addresses
1901census.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Ancestry Records
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www.Pro-Detective.com

You could try \link{http://genealogy.about.com/od/surname_meaning\this one}

if you put your surname into google it comes up with things, or if you put origination of surname ....

Apparantly mine means without blemish in the bible (??) and found jewellery in the name of my surname lol

i heard on the radio the other day that all surnames with anglo/british origins come from just four sources:

1. the trade of the person (e.g. tailor. thatcher, etc)
2. the father's name (e.g. johnson, peterson, etc)
3. place names
4. appearance (e.g. fairhead, little, strong, etc)

I have got a book called The Guiness Book of names and that has all the information you'll need. I'll happily look it up for you if you give me the name.