What are the best and worst books on surnames?

Question

Generally speaking. I don't assume any one book will be perfect.

Answer 1

There are two honest kinds; meaning and descendants of.

I like Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4, available on-line (one surname at a time), at

http://www.ancestry.com/learn/facts/defa...

Here is a sample entry from a noble surname, borne proudly by legions of warm, wise, witty, well-read and devilishly handsome men:

Pack Name Meaning and History

English (Kentish): from a medieval personal name, Pack, possibly a survival of the Old English personal name Pacca, although this is found only as a place name element and appears to have died out fairly early on in the Old English period. The Middle English personal name is more likely to be a derivative of the Latin Christian name Paschalis (see Pascal).

Jewish (Ashkenazic): metonymic occupational name for a wholesale trader, from German Pack ‘package’ (see Packer).

Anglicized form of Dutch Pak.

======================

It is for names common in the USA and is heavily slanted towards English, French and German names. It is light on Hispanic names, and doesn't treat Asian ones at all.

Once in a while a family association - the Descendants of John Smith, or the Robert Miller Association - will collect funds and hire a top-notch professional to trace all of the descendants of someone who came to the USA in 1692, then publish a book. (Sometimes they sell the book ahead of time, to raise the funds.) Books like that are pure gold.

The Lively Family Association did that in 1968; it is the standard by which I judge all other "Descendants of" books. "Lively" is rare enough a surname that most of the people in the USA with it are descended from just 9 men who were in the USA in 1698. I have a copy because one of the original 1698 men had a daughter, Jane, who married a Pack. The author traced a huge number of Packs.

A third, dishonest type - some unscrupulous publishers will throw together the surname meaning, brief bios of lawmakers, flag officers, authors, scientists and other famous people with the surname, add a couple of thousand names and addrersses from nation-wide phone books, give NO relationships and pawn it off to the unsuspecting as a "Smith Family History".