Your surname is important for many reasons. For the purpose of genealogy, your last name is a good way to link yourself to ancestors and other living relatives. It is possible to find relatives that you never knew existed simply by starting with a common surname.
Sometimes, all you have to work with is a surname. You learn that a distant relative had a brother, but no one in your family can recall what his first name was, or anything else about him. It is not unheard of for people to go by nicknames, instead of their actual first name. For example, I have an ancestor who went by Fritz, which was his nickname. In these cases, you may need to use the person’s last name as a starting point in order to learn more about him.
One excellent resource for this purpose is a website called Surname Genealogy Search. Simply enter the surname you are working with into the search engine, to begin. Or, if you prefer, you can click on any letter of the alphabet that appears below the search engine on their page. No matter if you have a very common surname or one that is more rare, you are very likely to be able to use this resource.
I decided to type in my maiden name, to see what this website could tell me. Instantly, a huge list of resources appears, each with a clickable link, that will help me take my search for a particular relative that much further. There are links to several well known genealogy websites. You can search particular years of the United States Census from 1790 to 1930 through what appears to be a free trial offer from a different genealogy website. You have access to the 1840 Pensions Database, the Korean War Casualty List database, and the Vietnam War Casualty List Database. These resources are especially helpful if you have heard stories that have been passed down through your family indicating that your distant relative served in one of these wars.
I found the Historical Newspaper Database to be both interesting, and frustrating. Interesting, because it shows images of actual newspaper fragments from long ago, and frustrating, because there didn’t appear to be a way to narrow down the search for newspapers from a particular area. Was your ancestor Canadian? Click on the link for the AG Canada Search. Or, choose the resources that help you search through the UK databases, or the Australian one.