15 May 2020

Surnames dictionary goes free during lockdown

According to an article from The Guardian, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland is online for free for a limited time - one week.

Compiled by a team of researchers from UWE Bristol, it includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and all those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census. That's tens of thousands of family names.

When I tried it here the site couldn't be reached. Try later if that's your experience.

Thanks to Susan Courage for the tip.


6 comments:

HChambers said...

Surname dictionary still not accessible.

Anonymous said...

Not available to me either. It's probably overloaded by all the people trying it for fun. Cheers, BT

Gail B said...

I agree with the earlier comments. My Daily U.K. Guardian had an entire article on this, and a link, which also was not available. Like one other comment here, I suspect with the lockdown in the U.K. genealogists are trying to get to this site, and it is down.

I am lucky in that well over a year ago, when this huge project was announced, I was able to find my surname search and save it.

Jean said...

Just tried the link, and got in. The search is perhaps a tad slow, but did provide results.

Btyclk said...

I tried the link. Twice. I couldn't get in. I went to the home page. I couldn't get in. I saw a place to log in. I saw a place to go through your institution. I clicked on that button and found a huge list of institutions. Because I am taking a course, I looked for my institution. I logged in through my institution. I had no problems getting in through this method. You can also register if you don't have an institution to go through.

Chuck Buckley said...

Worked this evening. Thanks