This article came from this weeks Roots Review Newsletter and gives some excellent tips for searching for names that have prefixes such as dit, de, la, etc. This is long but worth it if you have ancestors with these types of names. Bette 1b. SURNAME-SEARCHING POINTERS. Not all search engines are created equally due to the nature of the databases they are designed to search, but you can get the most out of RootsWebs mailing lists, message boards, and World- Connect by understanding how each works and planning your surname searches accordingly. A recent letter to the editor outlined some of the difficulties the writer was encountering in searching various databases for the surname St. John and all of its variations such as St John, StJohn, Saint John, Saint-John, and Saint-Jean. The writer also mentioned that the surname is a French Canadian one that might also appear in the context of a "dit" [also called] name such as Guerin dit St. John. Other multipart surnames such as De la Croix and surnames with prefix variations such as Obrien, O'Brien, Obrian, and OBrian as well as the "Mac/Mc" names, such as McMurray, MacMurray, and Mac Murray, can be equally challenging when searching for them on a message board or in mailing list archives. MAILING LISTS: To search RootsWebs mailing list archives, start here: http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl When searching these mailing lists, be aware that the search engine considers everything -- periods, apostrophes, hyphens, and even spaces -- as characters. So any variation in spelling in a posted message will result in missing a message that might be of interest to you unless you remember to search all variations. You can do this by using the Boolean operator OR. For instance: StJohn OR "Saint John" may be used as your search term to find either variation of this name. Searching on the term "Saint John" (in quotes) assures that you do not receive hits for each part of the name. The same holds true if you were searching for "de la Croix". French Canadian dit names may be searched by showing the full phrase in parentheses to match the full dit name, i.e. "Guerin dit Saint John" or "Guerin dit St. John" or "Guerin dit St John" or "Guerin dit StJohn". RootsWebs mailing list searches are never case sensitive. MESSAGE BOARDS: To search RootsWeb's message boards, start here: http://boards.rootsweb.com/ Make use of the advanced search features by clicking on the link on any message board page. It is especially important, even though the message boards have an every-word search, to search on the surname field where multipart surnames are involved because an every-word search on a name like Saint John will pick up every reference to Saint OR John as well as Saint John; whereas, a "surname search" on saint john will pick up ONLY the surname Saint John. Advanced searches on the surname field can also pick up correctly entered French Canadian dit names by searching on: guerin dit st. john, for example. Doing a general message board search for de la croix will pick up in descending order (order of relevancy) de la croix, la croix, de, la, croix -- the parts of the multi-part surname that are shown separated by spaces. This works, but usually not as successfully as searching on the specific surname field using an advanced search. Message board searches for surnames are case sensitive except for all lower-case searches. Case doesn't matter when posting names -- only when searching. To achieve the maximum number of hits, always use all lower- case searches here. WORLDCONNECT. To search for surnames in WorldConnect, start here: http://wc.rootsweb.com/ In WorldConnect you have a choice of searching for exact matches, which take everything into consideration in matching the surname -- including punctuation and spaces -- or searching using Soundex or Metaphone matches. These are explained in an earlier issue of RootsWeb Review: ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/review/20021030.txt POSTING TIPS. When you are posting a query on a mailing list or message board, or submitting a GEDCOM to WorldConnect, keep in mind the difficulties other researchers might encounter in searching troublesome names. It is best to type in these surnames showing all variations of the spelling used by the ancestors you are researching. If you have found the name spelled St. John, St.John, and Saint John, list the name using all three spellings. Take into consideration that the use or non- use of a space actually constitutes a variation in spelling. If you are preparing a genealogy file for the submission of a GEDCOM to WorldConnect, make use of whatever fields are offered in your genealogy program for recording alternate spellings of the surname so that all of these are recorded. If you are posting to a message board make use of the surname box to record multipart surnames and those with variations as follows using a comma to separate each surname: Saint John, St. John, St.John, StJohn, Saint-John, de la Cruz, O'Brien, Obrien, McMurray, MacMurray, Mac Murray . It is most important that these multipart surnames be recorded in the surname box and not just within the message body to enable searchers to find them more easily. FINDING LISTS AND BOARDS. If you are looking for a surname mailing list or message board for a difficult surname keep in mind that mailing lists for a Saint-something surname are usually named STJOHN, STLOUIS (no spaces), although there are a few lists where the Saint names are shown with a hyphen, such as the ST-LAURENT list. You can check the mailing list index for all variations of a surname at: http://lists.rootsweb.com/ Once you have found a mailing list for your surname, its description usually indicates the variations of the name covered such as: DELOACH -- DeLOACH surname and variations (e.g., DeLoache, DeLoatch, DeLoch, D'Loatche), OCONNELL -- O'Connell surname and all variations (e.g. O'Connell, Connell, Conel, Connelly, Connall, O'Conail), or MCCLEERY -- the McCleery surname and variations (e.g., Clery, Cleery, Cleary, Claree, Clarey, Cleare, Clearey, Clary, McCleary, McClary, MacCleary, MacCleery, O'Cleary, O'Cleery). While it is usually easier to locate a message board using the FIND A BOARD search box in the case of multipart surnames or those that include punctuation, you may find it easier to navigate to them using the index pages starting here: http://boards.rootsweb.com/ Begin with the first letter of a surname, then the first two letters, and finally the first three letters where you will find the list of all boards that start with the three-letter combination. You will find names listed alphabetically in the following manner: Obrian, O'Brian, Obriant, Obrien, O'brien. Names that begin with two letters and a space will be listed under the first two letters rather than the first three, such as: St. John or St Vincent. Punctuation such as a period is ignored and is not treated as a letter. Message board names such as StJohn or StJean, which do not include a space after the initial two letters, are indexed under the first three letters of the name alphabetically. Stjean and Stjohn are indexed under stj while St. and St (space) names are indexed under st only. Same for: De La Croix and De la cruz, which are indexed under de only. DeLaCroix and Delacruz are indexed under del. Message board names that do not contain periods are indexed before those that do. This means that St Vincent will appear before St. John (the first with no period and the second with a period). If you use the FIND A BOARD search box to locate a multipart or punctuated surname boards remember that searches using this box are NOT case sensitive. You may need to search for all variations of a surname to find a specific board. The FIND A BOARD search box will return hits for partial matches on multipart surnames where spaces are included in the name. These tips are provided to help you at RootsWeb. However, you may encounter different surname-searching challenges on the Web and in other databases. But, don't let a little thing like the difference between a Mc, Mac, and a space come between you and finding your ancestors. * * * 1b. ITEMS FROM THE EDITOR'S VIRTUAL DESK. About Dit Names QUESTION. While reading last week's issue, one writer mentioned dit names used by the French-Canadians with their surnames. I have found several dit names in my own ancestry and it so confusing. What exactly does it mean? ANSWER. A dit name was the practice of adopting an alternative surname. It was extremely common in Quebec. The term DIT is a form of the word DIRE [to say] and can be loosely translated as "that is to say" or "called." Dit names sometimes followed the family through the generations, but their use was sometimes inconsistent. Some families always used the dit name in combination with the original surnames, while others used it only occasionally. In many cases the dit name eventually replaced the original surname completely. Consult René Jetté's "Dictionnaire genealogique des familles du Québec and Msgr Cyprien Tanguay's "Dictionnaire genealogique des familles canadiennes (Volume 7) for lists connecting French-Canadian names with their possible dit names and other variants. An excellent book for French-Canadian researchers is "French-Canadian Sources: A Guide for Genealogists." It was published last year by Ancestry.com http://shops.ancestry.com/