Share Your Family Tree Names in a Word Cloud

So you think you know the main ancestral last names in your family tree, right?

You may be way off! There is a way you can visualize which family names are making up the majority of your family tree.

Recently I've seen a word cloud floating around that shows the most common last names in each of the regions of Italy. It's plain to see that Russo and Rossi are the most common Italian names throughout the country.

What about your family tree?

A word cloud shows the frequency of names in your family tree.

I created this tree-shaped word cloud using only names from my grandfather's hometown of Baselice, Italy. My Baselice Family Tree Maker file has more than 16,000 people, and this required a lot of manual editing. To save a few days, I'm showing only the last names of people whose first name begins with A. That's 3,355 people!

Ironically, the biggest names I see are not closely related to me.

You should know that because of intermarrying, I am related to roughly 13,000 of the 16,000 people in my file.

Even more surprising is that I can spot the names of in-laws, like Pallotta at the base of the tree and Borrillo at the base of the leaves.

Oh! And there's a tiny Pilla in the center. That's a name from my other grandfather's family!

To create your word cloud, you need a text file of just the last names. I exported a GEDCOM file, pasted it into a spreadsheet, and kept whittling it down with search and replace. Then go to https://www.wordclouds.com:

• Click the "Word list" button.
• Click the "Paste/Type text" link near the top.
• Copy and paste your list of names and click the "Apply" button.

When your word cloud is created, use the different buttons to change the shape, colors, spacing, and font.

When you're happy with your results, click the "File" button and choose how you'd like to save your family tree word cloud. Then share yours on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #familytreenames.

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Are You Overlooking Your Family Tree Discoveries?

What if the you from several years ago could talk genealogy with the you of today? Do you think the two of you could help each other out?

You're probably thinking that you've got so much more experience in family history now. You could teach so much to the past you. You could set her on the right course. You could tell her everywhere she's making genealogical mistakes.

But guess what? Past you has a lot to offer today's you, too. Past you holds some keys to your family tree that today's you has completely forgotten.

Today, past me and present me had a surprising collaboration. Here's what happened.

Digitizing death and marriage records is one thing. But notes are just as important.

When I went to Italy in 2005, I brought a notebook. It contained useful Italian phrases and facts I'd gathered about my closest ancestors.

My family tree was very small at that time, and I didn't have many documented facts. My plan was to use the few facts I had to explain who I was to the cousins I was about to meet.

In the same notebook, I jotted down details from three cemeteries I visited in my ancestral hometowns. My husband took photos of graves, and I wrote the facts in my notebook. When I was able to visit with cousins, I wrote down a few details they were able to share.

How I wish I'd taken better notes! But I was afraid of looking rude by paying more attention to my notebook than to my cousins.

Take Time to Collaborate With Yourself

This morning I read that old travel notebook and compared it to my family tree and the cemetery photos.

Past me, who'd scribbled all those notes, wound up providing present me with clues I didn't know I had! For example, my cousin Gennaro said his sister Maria had moved to New York City with her husband and four sons. I'd written down phone numbers for two of the sons, but I never called them.

Using the names of Maria and her sons, I found documentation for them on Ancestry.com. Maria and at least two of her sons became U.S. citizens. I knew I had the right people because they all had the same address between 1967 and 1971.

I learned that Maria and two of her sons died not long ago. And I had never contacted them because past me forgot to tell present me that their phone numbers were in that notebook. I missed my chance.

My Italian cheatsheet alongside cemetery notes.

This is a strong argument for digitizing everything you gather in your family tree research. Scan your official documents. Enter their facts into your family tree.

This is true for notebooks, loose notes, and recorded conversations, too. Preserve the information and make it searchable by typing it into your word processing software.

I don't want to throw out my 2005 travel notebook, even though my dog chewed it as a puppy. But it would be a terrible mistake to leave it in paper form only.

What Should You Re-read Today?

Next, past me is going to share old immigration notes with present me. When I took those notes, I didn't know if the people were related to me or not. I only knew that they had the right last names, so I wrote their facts down in a notebook.

We'll see if present me can make a breakthrough with that old, forgotten information.

To paraphase a TV ad campaign, "What's in your closet"?

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How to Make Your Family Tree Fireproof!

My family didn't pass down any paperwork. There were no birth certificates. No marriage certificates. No citizenship papers.

That's why I'm amazed at the photos other genealogists post of their slumped-over piles of color-coded folders. Their stacks of plastic bins filled with documents. Their rows of acid-free archive-quality storage boxes.

Whatever paper genealogy documents you have, digitize them!

I have one fat folder of paper documents related to my family tree. It rests comfortably in my two-drawer file cabinet along with every other piece of paperwork associated with my life.

Wag your finger at me if you must, but I'm here to urge you to digitize your family history! Our goal as family historians is to preserve and share every fact and document of our ancestors' lives.

That requires making their birth certificates, death certificates, and precious photographs:

• fireproof
• accessible
• safe from obsolescence

This seems like an overwhelming task to many family tree researchers. But isn't every aspect of building a family tree overwhelming? For goodness sake, you have 64 great great great great grandparents alone!

Like any other genealogical task, you have to set your goals, divide, and conquer. Choose a branch and dive in with these tasks:

• Scanning: A good scanner is not expensive. But if your budget is tight, consider borrowing one for a few days. Or get a free scanner app for your phone.
• Saving: Your family tree software should have the option of exporting your work as a GEDCOM file. A GEDCOM is a highly compatible format that any family tree software can open and use. Save your work as a GEDCOM regularly.
• Storing: Remember 3½-inch floppy disks? Computers can't read them anymore. A CD drive isn't even standard equipment on many new laptop computers. So practice redundancy:
  
  • Burn your digital files to a CD or DVD.
  • Copy them to an external hard drive.
  • Store them on one of the many clouds available to you: GoogleDocs, Dropbox, OneDrive.
  • Use FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, or another genealogy website to hold your family tree and its document files.

As genealogists, we love living in the past. We treasure each scrap of evidence of our ancestors' lives.

But we've got to plan for the future and the longevity of our hard work.

When it comes to one specific ancestor, like your maternal grandmother, you only want one. But when it comes to preserving her documents and photographs, redundancy, redundancy, redundancy!

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