On 30 Nov 2010 at 13:32, Ian Sage wrote: > Now seems to be working again at > http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/ > Out of curiosity (because I have checked before) I entered my own name, STOCKDILL, in the 1998 search and got the following message..... "There were no results found for your selection. There needed to be at least 100 people with the name on the Electoral Register in 1998 to be in the database. We are hoping to add these missing names at a later date." This bears out what I was saying in my previous message, i.e. that no surname with fewer than 100 occurrences is included. There must be literally thousands of rare names with under 100 occurrences - I know some with only one or two occurrences - which makes a nonsense of the value of websites such as this at the current time. There are currently around 40 of us in the UK with this name, but according to this database we don't exist! STOCKDILL shows up in 1881 (I could have told them that myself) but with no statistical details for name and ethnicity. Clearly, they have not linked it to the more common STOCKDALE, of which my name is simply a fairly rare variant. To me, this illustrates the problems that can arise when academics muck about with surnames. The Guild of One-Name Studies, to which I have belonged for many years and for which edited the Journal of One-Name Studies for 10 years, is in my view a more reliable source! There will be scores, if not hundreds, of surnames in the Guild's database that will probably never make Surname Profiler but records of which are held in databases of Guild members. -- Roy Stockdill Genealogical researcher, writer & lecturer Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History: www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." OSCAR WILDE