I read this on another list, ADVRES and checke dit out - I like it. As you know, our names could have really have been clobbered in spelling on older records. Even the shortest names could end up with unknown variants of spellings - depending on how they wrote the name, how it was heard by others and the nationality. Then was introduced soundex to help us and I really hate it. It serves its purpose I know but as an example with the name Gorin - it brings up Green (of which there are millions) and many others that I don't need. Metaphone is another system - so so. Then there is Thesaurus at http://www.namethesaurus.com/Thesaurus/Search.aspx This is a site that I'm just starting to investigate but it looks good. When you enter a name, it will give you the Thesaurus names (which SOUND like your surname), and also shows the soundex and the metaphone. As an example again for the name Gorin - soundex comes up with 1816 possible matches (99% of which are of no use); Metaphone has 1944 possibilities - again, not much of a help - and Thesaurus has 177 names - the majority of wish would be variant spellings of Gorin or sound alikes. Some I would never have thought to search for. It also shows you what "it" thinks is the match score - or the possibility of that being an alternate spelling with the highest percentage at the top. You might enjoy trying this out. Have a great weekend; we're supposed to have a 70% chance of freezing rain tomorrow/Sunday too. Sandi SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/