Hello Sally, Thank you for your prompt reply. That is appreciated although I'm afraid the explanation isn't. I was checking my spelling for a long time thinking I had made a mistake somewhere. So I am presumably supposed to enter the wrong spelling in order to get the answer. Who would have thought of that! I will be contacting the site directly via the Quill Pen image. Thanks again - my frustration is not with you. Christine -----Original Message----- From: sally roberts Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 8:52 AM To: eng-man Subject: Re: [ENG-MAN] Lancashire OPC (searching surnames query) Hello Christine, I received a reply from Paul Dixon at Lancs OPC regarding your query - he's not a member of the Manchester list so has asked me to send this explanation round. "The effect described occurs due to the way we group names to return all variant names from a given name. For search, it only allows the used of accepted variants of a name, even though the search results return both accepted and unusual variants. Thornbory is considered to be a recognisable but unusual variant, so is not accepted as the search term. The simplest example can be demonstrated with the name John. There are a number of cases where the name is actually written Jhon. We do not consider this an accepted variant so searches may not be conducted using Jhon, though any name entered as Jhon is returned when the search name John is entered. I hope that explains the issue. Regards, Paul Dixon Carrollton, Texas Coordinator, Lancashire Online Parish Clerks" Regards, Sally PS. Queries can be made to the website directly by clicking on the Quill Pen image shown on the pages. ---------------------------------------- > From: christinebenson313@btinternet.com > To: ENG-MANCHESTER-L@rootsweb.com > Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:11:31 +0000 > Subject: [ENG-MAN] Lancashire OPC > > Hi All, > > Thomas Henry THORNBORY was baptised 26 Sep 1858 at St Mary, Manchester, son > of John and Theresa. When I look for him on Lancs OPC using his forenames he > comes up. When I insert his surname it tells me there is no match for this > name in the surname field. If I just insert the surname and no other details > it tells me there is no match. > > Am I doing something silly or has the software got a bug? > > Christine