> I have a friend who is from England has a surname that is > hyphenated, (McKay-Green). His father and grandfather's last name > was the same. I have had much trouble doing any kind of research > for this name as all inquiries come back with either McKay or Green > but not McKay-Green. Any help would be greatly appreciated. > > Dawn Bolton <sunsup@verizon.net> Dawn- Much depends on how the search engine you are using has been programmed. Many search engines will allow you enclose a "phrase" in double quotes and searching for "McKay-Green" will find ONLY a reference to that specific hyphenated surname. Searching on McKay AND Green will also yield results where both names appear but not necessarily together with a hyphen (which may or may not be helpful to you). Databases that have a Surname field are often easier to search for a specific surname that is difficult to search otherwise as they would only find common words (for instance) that are being used as a surname -- such as Cousins, List, or Rivers. Search engines for databases with a surname field would also ONLY find McKay-Green if the name was shown in that manner with a hyphen provided the search engine is programmed to find WORDS and not STRINGS of letters. Joan JYoung6180@aol.com