Hello again -- I forgot to mention in my previous post re: WHELPDALE that I did not find any occurence of it or any variants when I did an IGI search for continental Europe (all countries). However, this does not necessarily mean that the name will not be found eventually in a European location. In fact, it doesn't prove anything one way or the other. It only means that no info on this surname has been added to the European info on the IGI. However, seeing as this name has been found in England as early as 599 -- and if it turns out to have connections to Europe -- my guess is that these connections would be Walloon rather than Huguenot. The first, earlier waves of refugees were the Walloons, generally from the area of French Flanders (border area between Belgium and France). They were later followed by the Huguenots from France. Andrea