Looking at the newspaper collection on Ancestry has been fun but a bit strange too. My great-grandfather's name was Willis Martin Bunker. I found references to him as Wm, W.M., Bill, and William. His brother's name was Sylvester Orville Bunker. He appeared as S.O. but much more frequently as Vet Bunker. Another brother was named for their father Hollis. Only the brother's name was Charles Hollis Bunker. He constantly appears as Hollis and I had to try to sort him out from their father. The fun one is my father. His name is Martin Alfred Bunker. Fortunately, I know he has always been called Freddy. So he is Fred, Freddy, and when he married my mother he was Frederick! When I do searches I try to always look first for the full name. But then when I find someone in a particular place that I feel is the target person, I also do a surname search in that area because he may just be called by another name. Who would ever think that Martin Alfred would turn out to be Freddy? Or Sylvester, Vet? I have never heard the nickname Vet for Sylvester but that is evidently what my uncle was always called. When you do a surname search you may find a lot of surprises. My family lived for a long time in Iowa. They were there starting about 1870 or so. There are not a lot of Bunkers even today and you would not think there would be too many unrelated Bunkers in the small towns of Iowa in the mid to late 1800's. Imagine my surprise to find a lot of Bunkers and to find that they were from several different families, including the German Bunkers with an s families. When doing research pay attention to anyone who might even remotely be related to the ones you are looking for. If you keep track of all of them and try all the different possible spellings, some day you may find that you have the record you have spent years searching for but it has a different name on it, like Vet! Bette