Tracking Names for Genealogy Research

If you're doing genealogy research on a somewhat unusual last name, you'll enjoy this site. Current event researchers will find that it may not be updated often enough to be useful.

NameTraq ( http://www.nametraq.com/ ) tracks news occurrences of over 25,000 of the most common last names in the United States. The news occurrences are not updated in real time; the front page notes that the new materials will be updated "bimonthly".

Last names are updated alphabetically from Aaberg to Zylstra. Pick a name and you'll get a list of links to recent news stories featuring that last name. Sometimes, particularly when a holder of that last name is a sports figure, you'll see the same team or place mentioned over and over again. The sites are external links of course, and the site warns of dead links. I didn't find any though I did run into a couple of requests for registration.

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