The Surname Register
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Every surname in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales began as a description. A trade, a farm, a father, a townland. Someone wrote it down once, in a hand that was never meant to last, and it outlived everyone in the room. Nobody in the family kept a copy. The clerks did. The Surname Register works from the original documents: parish registers, the Domesday Book, hearth and muster rolls, tithe books, Griffith's Valuation, ship manifests and the early American censuses. Each episode follows one set of surnames from its first written appearance to the families carrying it in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand today. A surname is evidence, not proof. Spellings drifted, clerks guessed, families moved. Where the record is genuinely uncertain, we say so out loud. New episodes every few days.
