New Surname Atlas software

From the Guild of One Name Studies:

Updated version of Surname Atlas

Surname Atlas, which was first launched in April 2003 at the Guild of One-Name Studies AGM & Conference in Liverpool, has been updated to version 1.1 and will be available at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live show at Olympia London on 25th to 27th February 2011. Visit the Guild of One-Name Studies tables 36 and 37 and purchase a copy at the new price of £15.00.

Surname Atlas will also be available to purchase on-line at the Guild of One-Name Studies website www.one-name.org/sales.html.

Surname Atlas plots surname and first name data from the 1881 Census. This is the simplest tool to use to demonstrate a surname distribution in Great Britain, and is regularly demonstrated at Fairs attended by the Guild of One-Name Studies. Even non-genealogists can get hooked! The Atlas can display at county level or at poor-law Union level, using absolute numbers or relative frequency.

The British 19th Century Surname Atlas is a fully interactive CD-Rom product that allows you to plot distribution maps for all of the surnames and forenames found in the 1881 census of England, Scotland and Wales. Using the program is simplicity itself: just insert the CD in your drive and wait for it to load. Then enter a surname in the data entry box and hit enter.

These are some of Surname Atlas’s features:

•Plot any of the 400,000+ surnames & variants that appear in the 1881 census. In many cases the maps will indicate the probable geographical origin of a surname.
•Plots any of the 160,000+ forenames, and view their popularity through time.
•Aggregate data by county or poor law union.
•Plot data as actual numbers, or a density (per 100,000 of the population).
•Include any collection of name variants on each map.
•Investigate surname elements using wildcards
•Show one or four surname maps at any one time.
•Zoom and pan the maps to frame exactly the area you want to see.
•Print maps, or export to the Windows clipboard.


Version V1.1 provides the following additional facilities/improvements:

•County Surnames tab added – identifies which surnames have a higher total percentage in a particular county than any other county. For example the surname “Beerling” is the most popular surname (by percentage) in Kent – with 93% of all “Beerlings” alive in 1881 being born in Kent.
•An increased program window dimensions increased to 1000x700 with a screen resolution of up to1024x768.
•Exports a map via the clipboard, including the map keys (i.e. the coloured boxes with associated values)
•Improved “look and feel”
•New design with larger graphics
•Results tab allows display of numbers as coloured-coded histogram bars
•Extended maximum zoom percent to 5,000% (mainly for London).

Steve Archer, Author of Surname Atlas, said today

“An old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words. With Surname Atlas, it certainly is! Surname Atlas is a must-have for the people undertaking family history research who want to show the distribution of their surnames”

(With thanks to Des Gander)

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Professional genealogical problem solving and research
http://twitter.com/ChrisMPaton
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