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Position:Home>Genealogy> Why does everyone think that genealogy is just about what your name means?


Question:90% of the questions here have nothing to do with REAL GENEALOGY,,, The Study of Heritage and Family tree.
Every day there are 20 questions of what does this name me or that. Look it up & Discover it for yourself.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: 90% of the questions here have nothing to do with REAL GENEALOGY,,, The Study of Heritage and Family tree.
Every day there are 20 questions of what does this name me or that. Look it up & Discover it for yourself.

Wendy has given you a good answer. Most are beginners and know absolutely next to nothing about genealogy. I admit name origins are not that important in genealogy. The same name can frequently come from more than one national origin and people with the same surname are not necessarily related or share ancestors.

Another thing, you have to understand is that a lot of people ask their question from the Home board of Yahoo Q & A. When they do it the Yahoo system picks out certain keywords and puts the question in the a category.

I have seen 2 questions regarding a grandfather clock. The word grandfather caused it to come to the genealogy board. When people give a person's name that usually triggers it to the genealogy board.

When a question first pops up on the genealogy board if you go to the Home board you can find it. HOwever, by then it might be on page 20 of the Home Board since there are so many questions there.

A lot of questions I just don't bother to answer. I feel people who just given an answer like "IDK" (I don't know) deserve thumbs down. If they can't contribute something worthwhile. Don't answer just to get 2 points.

Also we get a lot of silly kids wanting us to guess their ethnicity by their picture and that really doesn't have anything to do with genealogy and usually I ignore questions like that.

As people spend more time on the internet and less in libraries they have lost (if ever they had) an understanding of the value of "controlled vocabulary". Subject headings/categories only have value if people consistently attend to what they mean.

why are geneology people SO UP TIGHT!

God, they moan like hell when some 1 puts it in the wrong cat, SORRY but it does happen a lot, and this is a question and answers board meaning IF THEY HAVE A QUESTION THEY WILL ASK.

My opinion is that you are very misled about what yahoo answers is. It is a VERY generic site, open for any type of question at all. In genealogy terms, it is more like a portal or lobby. The high percentage of persons 'here' ARE total beginners, and often, students who have been assigned to find out what their name means. You are right.. persons who have much understanding about researching their ancestry, ARE moved on to more specialized sites. A minority of persons hang out, to help new persons and the occasional 'real' challenges.
Total beginners have every right to be here.
The thinking "look it up for yourself" is not an answer to ANY question here.. in fact.. it verges on a violation. If any person can't make a valid effort to answer a question, then getting two points by telling someone to "look it up" might be seen as gaming.

I think name meanings can be relevant to genealogy, sometimes surnames can give a clue to your origins and given names on occasion are meaningful too. (My third daughter has the middle name Tertia which means third - I'm hoping some genealogist of the future will notice and say - hey, way cool - or whatever the expression is in two hundred years.)

I actually wonder if the Yahoo Answers system is responsible for a large number of the incorrectly categorised questions here - especially the genetics questions.

Everybody needs a place to start. If you've never done a smidge of research on your family and you've never had the benefit of stories about your family, you have to start with the basics. Maybe it's a little simplistic, but for many people it's the obvious place to start. Do we hope to help them move on from there? Sure. Some people have names so generic that their meaning and ethnicity isn't obvious. But from there we can take them to places like http://www.castlegarden.org and http://www.ellisisland.org It's from places like that where they can legitimately start researching their families. But until they make the first move, no amount of thinking will help them get answers.