When you family name dies out!

[pharmaT]

I have a VERY common surname (top 20 in UK).  However my Dad and his brother only had daughters, my paternal grandfather was an only child and his father only had a sister. 

My daughter on the other hand has a very unusual name 52 people world wide (all related and proven by me) with the exact same spelling.  If you add in the 2 main spelling variants whom I have also shown to be descended from the same couple from 200 years ago you have a total of 106 people.  In 19 years of research I have yet to find a bearer of the name who is not related in some way and for a start I have gone through every incidence of the name in the Scottish statutory registers as part of my research as well as work on GRO and American and Irish records.  Although there are sons in the wider family there is potential for it to die out.  Between her Dad and his brother there is only one son, all her grandfather's brothers had only daughters so limited on this particular line.

[whiteout7]

The women in my family used to be named like this

(firstname) (mothers surname) (mothers, mother's surname) (fathers surname)

I'm glad they stopped it, LOL

Made tracing female lines easy

Not sure about the male surname fading out, happens to women all the time when we marry.

Some couples take on a new surname altogether to make a new history and not a double barrelled surname either

[mumjo]

I know of two marriages where the husband has taken their wife’s surname. One so that the name was continued (Scottish clan), the other simply because he didn’t like his surname.

[tillypeg]

Many people change the Locks after moving house, of course.

Martin

presumably using the Lock-Smiths, Martin?