by: Dakota Caudilla

You'll be surprised with the kind of information you'll unearth when you do a research on your own family name. People you've never known existed, long-lost relatives, and friends who share the same lineage as you! This is what researching your own surname can do for you. If you're not ready for some surprise findings, you're better off leaving all this researching to others in your family.

Researching your own surname can be done through different methods. For one thing, the most popular among all the other methods of researching your own family surname is through the Internet. The wide availability, freedom of use and flexibility of the internet makes it the most popular genealogical research tool known to humankind today! Try websites like http://www.genealogy.com and you'll see what we mean. By typing in your surname or your ancestor's first and last name, you'll come up with a whole list of possible family members that you can easily fill up your family tree. These tools are generally easy to use and some websites even have communication tools whereby you can contact the possible relative directly too. These websites contain hundreds of millions of family names in their database to help people find long-lost family members. And if you use their tool and make a small contribution, you can use their online tool or software to create a family tree. However, for International users, you might have a bit of problem researching your family name because most databases contain popular family names widely used in the United States.

If you do not reside in the United States, here's what you can do. Try going to your favorite search engine and typing ‘Chinese family name research' or ‘Irish family name research' or ‘Indian surname genealogy research' into the search bar. You might come up with some websites that can help you find out more about your family surname within your locality. For Chinese surnames, try http://genealogy.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fgenforum.genealogy.com%2Fchina%2F. The forum is very active and most importantly, the people in there are really helpful.

If that doesn't help, try http://www.progenealogists.com/genealogysleuthi.htm where there is a listing of different genealogy sleuths all around the world.

Genealogy Sleuths are basically people who compile databases of family names in certain areas and the biggest collection of these databases are, of course, names and family names of people residing in the United States.