Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2018

Outside your geographical comfort zone? Some tips to help in a one-name study.

In my own one-name study, I have been to different countries both virtually and in person to conduct research.   The effort to date has been primarily in the Channel Islands, pre-confederation Newfoundland, Canada, England, a very little bit of France, and some beginning research in the United States. I am fortunate to have a reasonable degree of fluency in French, which I have used quite a bit in old Jersey documents, although the Jersey dialect itself, known as Jèrrais , is definitely beyond me.   Thank goodness a lot of old documents followed the Norman tradition of “standard” French.   The Ruby project presents quite an interesting experience for those who have not strayed far from home in their one-name study research.   It is unlikely that any version of Ruby has its origins in the United Kingdom, despite a longstanding presence in southwestern England and in parts of Ireland.   Preliminary reading suggests that for both these areas, the origin of the name is