Surname Saturday & Sorting Saturday - Orlando One Name Study

Prompted by a combinations of discussions on the Guild of One Name Studies closed mailing list and the newly created and very popular The Organised Genealogist Facebook Group in addition to tackling a substantial pile of filing I thought I would share this post.

I host, as perhaps you are aware, two One Name Studies. The first study registered with the Guild of One Name Studies was Orlando, which is an Italian name. Over the last 10 year I have gathered quite a bit of information, some I had recently rediscovered and some was already filed.

As I sat filing and pondering yesterday I realised that I was not happy with my current structure. Paper is fine, but I really want to utilise online facilities too and share the data.

As one would expect the occurrences of the name Orlando is minimal in the UK and quite simply the spreadsheets are divided into

• Parish Records - Births, Marriages & Deaths - any date 
• Civil Registration 1837 - current day
• Cemetery Records & Monumental Inscriptions
• Directories and Occupations

These are not exhaustive, but you get the idea.

The most occurrences of the surname are in Italy, followed by the United States and that is where the problem starts.

Do I index by State or by record type?

Currently I hold

• Births, Marriages and Deaths across a variety of States
• Cemetery Details
• Military Details
• Naturalisations
• Directories & Occupations

Again, these are not exhaustive and I am sure you get the idea.

I want to get the data under control, before I can extract any more details and I am wondering what others think.

Any thoughts or remarks are welcome!