Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – What’s in a Name

Calling all Genea-Musings fans!

It’s Saturday night again — time for some more Genealogy Fun!

Hey boys and girls, are you ready for this week’s challenge?

Here is your assignment, should you choose to accept it (you are reading this, so I’m guessing you really do want to play along — cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1. You were born and given a forename (first name and maybe a middle name) and a surname on your birth certificate. What were they?
2. How many persons appear on the FamilySearch Family Tree (using an exact search for your birth name) with your first name and, separately, your surname? Are there any other persons with your complete first–middle–surname?
3. How many matches do you have in the FamilySearch Historical Records (exact search) with your first name and, separately, with your surname? Any others with your complete first–middle–surname?
4. How many persons are in the Ancestry Public Member Trees (exact search) with your first name and, separately, your surname? Are there any other persons with your complete first–middle–surname?
5. How many persons are in the Ancestry Historical Records Collections (exact search) with your first name and, separately, your surname? Are there any others with your complete first–middle–surname?
6. Share your results in your own blog post, as a comment to this post, or on social media (Twitter or Facebook) in response to this challenge.

---

My Results

Name: Marcia Jo Crawford

---

FamilySearch Family Tree

• Exact for Marcia (1526–2025) – 859,838
• Exact for Crawford (1526–2025) – 3,930,348
• Exact search for Marcia + Crawford – 8
• Search for Crawford with Marcia (not exact, manually counted) – 26
• Exact search for Marcia Jo Crawford – none

---

FamilySearch Historical Records

• Exact for Marcia – 859,838
• Exact for Crawford – 3,591,640
• Exact for Marcia + Crawford – 359
• Search for Marcia (exact) with Crawford – 266,943
• Search for Marcia with Crawford (not exact) – 384
• Exact match for Marcia Jo Crawford – none

---

Ancestry Public Member Trees

• Exact for Marcia – 73,510
• Exact for Crawford – 428,646
• Exact for Marcia + Crawford – 41
• Search for Marcia (exact, sounds like/similar) and Crawford (exact) – 673
• Search for Marcia (exact, sounds like/similar) and Crawford (exact, soundex) – 1,144
• Exact match for Marcia Jo Crawford – none

---

Ancestry Historical Records

• Exact match for Marcia Jo Crawford – 263
• Exact for Marcia – 3,406,466
• Exact for Crawford – 10,142,483
• Exact for Marcia + Crawford – 1,948
• Search for Marcia (exact, sounds like/similar) and Crawford (exact) – 19,617
• Search for Marcia (exact, sounds like/similar) and Crawford (exact, soundex) – 31,952
• Exact match for Marcia Jo Crawford – 263

It’s fascinating to see how my name compares to others across different databases. While both “Marcia” and “Crawford” are fairly common, the combination of my full name, “Marcia Jo Crawford,” appears to be quite rare—almost unique! Exploring these numbers was a fun reminder of how our names connect us to a larger web of people, both past and present. Whether our names are shared by many or held by only a few, they each carry stories waiting to be discovered in the records we explore.