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.

Colin D. Rogers is a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, and an Associate of the Institute of Population Registration. He runs a consultancy which specialises in tracing missing beneficiaries.

List of maps
List of abbreviations
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I The modern distribution of surnames
Part 2 The distribution of surnames since the Middle Ages
Part 3 The distribution of surnames in medieval England
Epilogue
References and further reading
Appendices:
1 List of prefixes and suffixes
2 Published name maps
3 Source of names prior to 1700
4 List of names studied for background
Surname index
General index