General Chat

The "soundex" for surnames on FS and Anc*y seems very good. You would never get "Webberley" for "Webb" on those. And, if you are searching for a name like Engles (or Marks for that matter ;-)), you do need Inglis, Engels, Marcus, Marx, Marques, etc.

It is a safety net - there are so many reasons for varied spelling - wrong transcriptions from censuses - which can be wrong in the first place if the census taker didn't hear right - and particularly in the case of registrations by the illiterate. I have had one breakthrough -where the birth registration was Engles, the mother just signed with an 'x', but thanks to Ancestry coming up with Inglis, Ingles, Englis I have been able to add several generations.

I have the surname DATE which shows all sorts of dates in the calendar!
But very few people with this surname.

The same goes for searches on Google, Yahoo etc.

A while back, you would have had a return of WEBB

The returns of WEBB, WEBBER, WEBBERLEY etc etc is GR's idea of improvement :-S

One surname I have is ADAM. I get ADAM, ADAMS, ADAMSON etc etc.

There should be a box to tick, choosing ONE name or close matches.

Example, I also have the surname CLARK, which is often spelled CLERK or CLARKE..... but that gets annoying, because I also get CLARKSON etc etc etc.

:-(

You can filter that by clicking on 'surname' in turquoise at top of list...that will give you the Webbs first, (you may need to click once or twice)

Am I the only member to think that there is room for improvement?

Example:
A search for surname WEBB, a one syllable name, also returns two syllable names such as WEBBER – and three syllables names such as WEBBERLEY.