MISSING LINKS: A Weekly Newsletter for Genealogists Vol. 4, No. 20, 14 May 1999; Circulation: 20,650+ Copyright (c) 1996-99 Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley Editor-at-Fault: Julia M. Case Co-Editor-to-Blame: Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG CONTENTS: Welding Links: Web Links; Successful Links and Virtual Bouquets; Conferences, Reunions, Seminars; Letters to the Editors; Humor; Reprint Policy; Call for Articles * * * * * WELDING LINKS: HOOKED ON ONOMASTIKONS by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG <[email protected]> <http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~gormleym/> Tracing a surname and the family who used it is one of the most fascinating pursuits in genealogy. Your surname can be a clue to your paternal ethnic origins, assuming it has been a hereditary one for some time. However, because so many of our names have been "Americanized" through the years, there are many Americans bearing British-sounding names whose ancestors never set foot in the British Isles. Do you know how long your family has used its surname? Have you traced its origins as far back as possible (perhaps to the Middle Ages)? Names have their own histories, just as families do. How many variant spellings of your name have you found? You know you can always recognize a brand-new genealogist by their insistence that "Our name has ALWAYS been spelled this way." It simply is not so. Some of us descend from an ancestor who was adopted or reared by another family and took their surname. Many of us bear surnames that were simply taken by our ancestors for various reasons. Others had their names officially changed. Most of the hereditary surnames of Europe derive from: o Patronymics, from the father's first name; John's son became Johnson. o Occupations, like Carpenter, Cartwright or Smith. o Place or topographical names such as London, Atwater. or Hill. o Nicknames, such as Goodall ("good ale") for an ale-taster or brewer; or Crookshanks, a bowlegged man or one with a crooked leg. Larger libraries usually have several surname dictionaries. Peruse them all. A DICTIONARY OF SURNAMES, by Hanks and Hodges, is helpful, but not all American surnames appear in it. Be sure to check its index where you will find, for example, the surname Eyers referenced to Ayer. Then look up Ayer in the main section for information. For those with suspected German names, consult GERMAN-AMERICAN NAMES, by George F. Jones, and see Elsdon C. Smith's NEW DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN FAMILY NAMES. Curious where other people with your surname live in the United States? There is a database on the Web with 50,000 of the most common U.S. surnames at this website: <http://hamrick.com/names/> The top 50 surnames of England and Wales are listed at: <http://www.fairacre.demon.co.uk/England-Surnames/Top50.htm> Check out An Onomastikon (Dictonary of Names) <http://www.fairacre.demon.co.uk/>. This collection of names around the world entertains and educates. * * * * * DIONYSIUS EXIGUUS, Y2K, THE MILLENNIUM AND THE APOCALYPSE ... It's Somebody's Fault and Now We Know Who by Richard A. Pence <[email protected]> A communique from the frontier reports that business is booming. The frontier in this case is Colorado, where our daughter and her husband have taken up residence and where he has, er, immersed himself in his family's well business. The well business is booming on the frontier because a whole lot of Californians are flocking to the hills. Here they intend to insulate themselves from the consequences of the calendar spinning over to two-triple-zero just after midnight 31 December 1999. I've been spending a lot of time worrying about this. Not about the Californians or impending disaster, but about who's to blame. A crisis of this magnitude deserve a proper amount of finger- pointing. It's convenient -- but unfair -- to blame early computer programmers. They were simply doing what they had to do: saving bytes. And by dropping the first two digits of the year they saved several megatons or them. Besides, it was a matter of self-preservation. They spent years learning foreign tongues like Fortran and, once they had all those bank computers miscalculating our balances, their reward was to be laid off. There is sweet irony in contemplating the down-sizing fellow who gave the pink slips to an army of Fortran linguists in the early '80s crawling up to these same folks and begging them to come back at three times their previous salaries. (Apparently four-digit year fields cost a whole lot more than two-digit ones.) So if it's not the programmers' fault, who is to blame? I discovered his name the other day while going through some notes on how various renditions of the calendar leap up and bite our genealogical endeavors when we least expect it. Write this down (there is going to be a test right after the first of the year): The guy to blame is a Roman abbot by the name of Dionysius Exiguus. He is the fellow who, in the year 525 while working up a set of tables to confuse us about when Easter is, conceived the idea of numbering the years according to what we now call "the Christian era." Using a secret formula, he calculated when Christ was born and decided that the ensuing year would be known as 1 A.D. The idea caught on and, as you know, we now are approaching the year 2000 in this sequence. The reason Dionysius Exiguus is the culprit is that he miscalculated the year of Christ's birth. If he had gotten it right, we would have already weathered Y2K! (Or we would already have been destroyed, whichever is slated to come first.) Dionysius Exiguus also made another blunder. When he set up his new method for numbering years, he decided that the year immediately preceding 1 A.D. would be 1 B.C. He clean skipped zero. This wasn't entirely his fault, for the concept of zero hadn't been discovered yet, at least by the Romans. Even today you will be hard-pressed to find out what the Roman numeral for zero is. (The Arabs knew about zeros, but apparently they weren't sharing.) This latter error will cause several thousand New Year's Eve bar room brawls. These will be between us "rationalists" and you "fools." We rationalists will (correctly) point out (and will be stoutly supported by the Royal Observatory, which is the arbiter of stuff like this) that there is nothing to get excited about: Since the first year was 1 A.D. (not 0), the second millennium will not end until midnight on 31 December 2000. You fools will say we're wrong and point out that the ensuing year will start with a 2 instead of a 1, then (quite illogically) say this proves that the third millennium will begin immediately after midnight. In the end, we will all agree that any year with three zeros deserves a bit more celebrating than, say, 1995, which was the year I was introduced to Windows. In attempting to assess the blame for our Y2K/millennium problems, I briefly considered whether John did it. John [--?--] (like many of the wives in our family trees, has an unknown surname) is the one who wrote the book of Revelations. This book has brought worldwide panic on several occasions. For example, on the eve of 1000 A.D. a good many folks ended it all rather than face the horrors they believed awaited them at the beginning of Y1K. I ruled John [--?--] out as a suspect for two reasons: First, the world didn't end and, second, he wrote his book before Dionysius Exiguus began numbering the years. Thus John [--?--] could hardly predict the world would end in 1000 A.D. because Dionysius Exiguus hadn't yet told anyone when that would be. (Let's not quibble about whether John [--?--] already knew what Dionysius Exiguus was going to invent.) There are those who point out that even though the predictions about Y1K were wrong, this time we are really going to get it. That, I understand, is part of the reason so many will be camping out over the New Year's holiday this year. The way they figure it, either (a) the world will come to an end this time for sure or (b) Y2K will so disrupt commerce that they won't be able to get enough bread, milk and toilet paper to last out the storm. In either case, I suppose it's a good idea to have plenty of fresh water and not be too close to California. [The facts herein and much more good stuff on the topic of time, years and calendars can be found in: The Nautical Almanac Offices of the United Kingdom and the United States of America, "Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris and the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac" (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961).] * * * * * WEB LINKS: CHURCHSURF. Churches of the world listing hundreds of churches currently on the Internet. ChurchSurf is in other languages including Spanish, German, and French. Surf ChurchSurf through AltaVista's Translation service. Warning: This is in beta. This service does not get all of the words or phrases. <http://www.churchsurf.com/ FAMILYSEARCH TEST SITE. Through its "Custom Search" you can beta test the Family History Library Catalog, search the International Genealogical Index for a specific event and year, or search Ancestral File using any combination birth year, christening year, marriage year, death year, or Ancestral File number. <http://www.familysearch.org/> NORTH CAROLINA. Sampson-Duplin counties, North Carolina Revolutionary War Soldiers <http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncduplin/rev-war.htm>. NORTH CAROLINA. Johnston County, North Carolina Revoltionary War Soldiers. <http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncrevwar/ncjohnston_revwar.htm ROOTSWEB. Links to all of the free genealogical resources hosted by RootsWeb, including more than 6,000 surname, locality, ethnic, special interest, and other mailing lists; thousands of Web sites (among them Cyndi's List, the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, the WorldGenWeb Project, the International Black Sheep Society of Genealogists, and the International Internet Genealogical Society); searchable databases, such as the RootsWeb Surname List (RSL) to which, in addition to searching, you may upload information about your own research interests); GenConnect; Surname Search; Threaded List Archives; and much more. <http://www.rootsweb.com/> WORLDGENWEB FOR KIDS. This site is designed for young people age 18 and under, or classes studying genealogy and history. There is a page for educators, but it is not necessary to be an educator to enjoy the page. <http://www.rootsweb.com/~wgwkids/> * * * * * * * * * * eBAY REACTS TO CONCERNS. Rob Chesnut, Associate General Counsel for eBay, announced on 4 May 1999 that the company had recently been contacted by citizens who expressed concern over the fact that several historical tombstones have appeared for sale on the eBay site. Chesnut said: "We share your concern, and will not permit these items to be sold on our site . . . eBay has promptly removed every tombstone brought to its attention, informed the sellers that such markers are not allowed on the site, and refunded all fees in connection with these auctions to ensure that eBay has in no way received money for this activity. To discourage future listings of tombstones on the site, eBay will also be posting rules on its site shortly regarding the sale of artifacts which will specifically inform users that the sale of historical tombstones is illegal in many states and is prohibited on eBay." If you have questions or comments you can contact Rob Chesnut by phone at (408) 558-5948 or by e-mail at [email protected] * * * * * * * * I have instructed that my family to include my maiden name on my gravestone. I think that would be helpful for genealogists in the future if all women would do that. <[email protected]> * * * Previously published by Julia M. Case and Myra Vanderpool Gormley, CG, Missing Links: A Weekly Newsletter for Genealogists, Vol. 4, No. 20, 14 May 1999. Please visit the MISSING LINKS Web page at <http://www.rootsweb.com/~mlnews/index.htm>. * * * * * BACK ISSUES OF MISSING LINKS ARE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD from <ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/mlnews/>. Julia M. Case <[email protected]> Co-Editor of ROOTSWEB REVIEW ROOTSWEB GENEALOGICAL DATA COOPERATIVE P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 <http://www.rootsweb.com/>