Hello. This is part of the last Rootsweb and I thought it might be useful for the inexperienced and a reminder for the rest of us. 1. NEWS AND NOTES 1a. In Search of the Wild LNUs A long time ago in a kingdom far away there lived a fair maiden by the name of Fnu MNU. She married a handsome young knight named Sir Arthur LNU and thus she became Fnu (MNU) LNU. Wait! Stop! Does this sound a bit like a page out of YOUR family tree? Are you spending sleepless nights prowling the Web in search of your elusive MNU and LNU ancestors?  Or perhaps you've encountered them in someone's GEDCOM file on WorldConnect at RootsWeb, and after doing more searches have come to the conclusion that there are many researchers out there hunting those wild and crazy LNUs. Well, it's time to let you in on one of genealogy's best kept secrets: LNU, MNU, and FNU are not real names. They are acronyms. (Acronyms are combinations of the first letters/syllables in a group of words to form a new grouping of letters that can be pronounced as a word.) They are: First Name Unknown (FNU), Maiden Name Unknown (MNU), and Last Name Unknown (LNU). They are first cousins to the mysterious UNK ancestors that you might have spent time tracking down until you realized that UNK was short for "unknown." Researchers have used these acronyms and other symbols and abbreviations for years, with little or no uniformity from file to file, to indicate the unknown or missing names. The meaning of these acronyms is often unclear and can be mistaken for actual names by new  -- and not so new -- genealogists. After all, we all have a few oddly spelled names in our trees, so what's a MNU or two? On another note, be careful should you encounter any DITTO ancestors in your line. DITTO is an actual surname, but it is frequently mistaken as a surname by those reading an enumerator's "ditto" entry to denote that the name is the same as the one listed above it. (DITTO and DITTOE are Anglicized forms of a Huguenot name of unexplained etymology. The names are found in North America by 1700. Ditto also is a short form of the Italian personal name Benedetto.) All of this name confusion serves to reinforce the notion that while user-compiled genealogies are a valuable tool in research, you need to examine original records to verify or refute what the compiled records indicate. When possible examine the records for yourself. What can you do to make your files clear as to the abbreviation or acronyms you use to indicate any unknown given names, maiden names, or surnames? There are no perfect solutions or worldwide standards. Some compilers, especially those who use genealogy software, put a question mark to indicate that a name is not known, but this is not recommended as some creative family historians use one question mark, while others use two or three, and a ? for a name might mean one thing to you and something else to another researcher