Hi Roy If you use the count function in freebmd you get the totals ie when searching for Unknown as a surname all events 71951 records match your query births = 4033 records match your query deaths = 67909 records match your query marriages = 9 records match your query (although one is a duplicate) The deaths being the largest amount by far, its interesting to see the period breakdown 1837 to end 1850 7425 records match your query 1851 to 1860 7725 records match your query 1861 to 1870 9869 records match your query 1871 to 1880 8426 records match your query 1881 to 1890 6980 records match your query 1891 to 1900 6704 records match your query. 1901 to 1910 5847 records match your query 1911 to 1920 5391 records match your query At which point it starts to falter as freebmd is an ongoing project but its interesting to see the amount of unknown named deaths is nearly double 1861 to 1870 compared to 1901 to 1910 In the period 1861 to 1870 6221 male unknown 3316 female unknown rather worryingly 191 were unknown unknown, they must have been in a particularly bad way :-( Compared to 1901 - 1910 4127 male unknown 1552 female unknown So it appears that its somewhat more dangerous to be the male of the species <g> Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) > If you enter just the surname UNKNOWN into FreeBMD you will get a message > telling you that there are more than 50,000 entries and the maximum that can be > displayed is 3,000. The number of unknown births is 4,033 and the vast > majority, of course, are deaths - the search tells you there are more than > 50,000, so lord knows what the actual number is!