Data Geeking

[house_elf]

So, I've been putting the cornwall data on the back burner, except for some small amount of time as a stress reliever, during the week prior to the wedding. I picked it back up again yesterday evening, and again today. Have had some stressors with it...mostly arguing between the software and what I want it to do, but that's cleared itself up. So

Comments

[page_of_swords]

This is original heraldry research?

[wanderingpixie]

Kind of. It's going through old lists from registries (census info, marriage lists, birth lists, those sorts of things) and pulling out the names they used. Also tracking different spelling variants of the same names and how many instances of each name there is. At least... that's my understanding of the type of project it is.

There are some types of heraldry research that are more complex in determining _why_ people/places are named what they are. I think of that as being more 'original research'... but they're both extremely useful =)

[house_elf]

You're correct in the project type. I downloaded the scans in jpg, then pulled the names from that, dropping them into a spreadsheet and separating masc and fem given names and surnames, then compiling how many of each spelling there were in the data set....which includes 17 parish registers in Cornwall...and then how many instances of, say, "Elizabeth" in each register, and over all. Sifting through the data for spelling variations, diminutives, and such. Finding out that in the late 1500's, "Rawe" was a more popular surname than "Richard" (not allowing for spelling variants).

[page_of_swords]

Sounds publishable grad level stuff to me.