Names seem to be one of the first ways family members learn about their history. Sometime after settling on grandparents' pet names, they ask questions about surnames and relationships soon after.

Today’s episode focuses very specifically on the names in Emma’s family tree as a thread to pull us through some incredible resources you might never have known about. She’s kindly offered her slides here as a reference.

As with each episode, Emma thoughtfully included several unexpected tips. Among them were:

* Learn about some traditional naming patterns for middle names and how to use them in your research:

* family-tree.co.uk/how-to-guides/how-to-use-naming-patterns-to-find-your-ancestors

* familytreemagazine.com/names/researching-ancestors-middle-names

* Exploring clusters of names and how to use physical maps to find pairings using examples of Sweetapple and Blatch in Wiltshire:

* forebears.io/surnames/sweetapple

* namecensus.com/last-names/blatch-surname-popularity

Examples of individuals & their stories:

* George Alan Rodney Wright-Nooth, Emma’s 3rd cousin, twice removed, who was captured as a Japanese POW during WWII:

* His obituary: Telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1404415/George-Wright-Nooth.html

* Awards and medals www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80008215 (not visible in all locations)

* George Wright-Nooth’s brother Peter’s remembrance: www.cnac.org/emilscott/wrightnooth01.htm

* A book George Wright-Nooth wrote about his experiences as a prisoner of War, now on Google Books, UK: Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: The Fall of Hong Kong and the Imprisonment by the Japanese

* Europeans in East Africa, a database of people of European origin who lived and worked in East Africa referencing him. europeansineastafrica.co.uk/_site/custom/database/?a=viewIndividual&pid=2&person=2982

* Major William Reginald James Alston-Roberts-West who was killed in action in 1940. The father-in-law of Emma’s fourth cousin.

* Memorial in a church in Preston on Stour:

iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/19356

* As a Grenadier Guard, his photo is available for purchase on their site: images.grengds.com/1945-officer-memorial-album-1/maj-w-r-j-alston-roberts-west-14750835.html

Useful References

Emma’s assortment of helpful sites for this kind of research:

* Find a grave

* Family Tree Maker (or other desktop family history software) for reports

* The London Gazette (or other local newspaper)

* Old family wills

* Europeans in West Africa

* Newspaper obituaries

* Imperial War Museum oral histories (UK)

* Grenadier Guards & Photographs of individuals (example above)

* Companies House for living people associated with companies in the UK. (In the US, such details are called annual information statements and are available from the Secretary of State for each state. A great many corporations are in Delaware.)

* Useful free Windows software called “Transcript” for transcribing wills

* To find the distribution of surnames and learn about their origins (ad-supported):

* Forebears.io

* Namecensus.com (works with familiar names in English)

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