Help Section

Normal Searches

Quite straight forwards really. Enter either a first name or a last name or both.

e.g.

• First Name: David
• Last Name:empty

Note: If you do a First Name only search you will see a graph at the bottom of the screen. This graph shows the popularity of the name over the last 100 or so years. The graph is calculated based on the age of people that have the name you used in the search. You won't always see a graph though, it will only be displayed for the most common names. Think about it, if there's only two people with a certain first name it wouldn't really make for much of a graph.

or

• First Name:empty
• Last Name: Smith

or

• First Name: David
• Last Name: Smith

Note: David Smith is the most common name in the UK. Most people think it's John Smith though.

Wildcard Searches

These searches are a little more interesting. You can wrap any search term inside a * (asterisk) character and the search engine (angry squirrels) will return the top ten matching results. The * character can be used at the start of a word (equivolent of Ends With), end of a word (equivolent of Starts With) or at the start and end (equivolent of Containts)

NOTE: You can use wildcards only on the first name OR last name, NOT BOTH!!

E.G.

• First Name: *fred
• Last Name: empty

This search would return the top 10 names that end with the word fred

or

• First Name: fred*
• Last Name:empty

This search would return the top 10 first names that start with the word fred

or

• First Name: *fred*
• Last Name: empty

This search would return the top 10 first names that contain the word fred

or

• First Name: *fred*
• Last Name: Smith

This search would return the top 10 names that contain the word fred in the first name and had a last name of smith

or

• First Name: empty
• Last Name: Bath*

This search would return the top 10 last names that started with the word bath

Interesting Wildcard Searches

It might not seem obvious to some of you but you can get some interesting results from the wildcard searches

• First Name: a* - The top ten first names starting with a
• First Name: *s* - The top ten first names containing an s
• First Name: z*- The top ten first names ending with z
• Last Name: *av* - The top ten last names containing the letters av
• First Name: * - The top ten first names in the UK
• First Name: * and Last Name: smith - The top ten full names where the last name is Smith
• First Name: john and Last Name: * - The top ten full names where the first name is John
• Last Name: * - The top ten full names where the first name is John
• You get the idea right...