Thanks for the additional information on British Origins Karen > British Origins has a few options when searching for names: exact match, > "close variants", "all variants", & using wildcards. The "close > variants" search is something like the system on the IGI, & returns > exact matches, & common alternative spellings or misspellings. "All > variants" widens that somewhat. If I recall correctly, on Ancestry you > can choose exact matches, or one of the character near-miss systems. I > think that's far inferior to the British Origins system. The near-miss > Ancestry option produces vast amounts of completely unrelated names. > > I just tried EMANUEL again: 356 for exact only, 402 for close variants, > 414 for all variants. Slightly more in 1861. EMMANUEL got 36/401/413. > > Paul