Genealogy is fun, and there are even moments where you may have a hard time controlling your laughter as you piece together your family tree. Don’t worry, it’s okay to laugh a little along the way – unless you are in the library doing research. Everybody knows that you are not supposed to laugh in the library. In fact, I do not frequent libraries because inevitably, every time I do, I have a funny thought and have to run outside before I burst out laughing and disturb the silence. I have no idea why this happens, it just does.
Laughter can be a great way to ease the pain of frustration. When you are looking for certain names in certain geographic locations, frustration is inevitably what you will find. For example, have you ever tried to look for an Anna Maria or a Johann in Germany? You won’t have a hard time finding them because they are so numerous. However, finding the Anna Maria or Johann that is your ancestor may take a while because you will have to sift through a lot of information about all of those other Anna Marias and Johanns.
The same principle holds true if you are searching for a Maria or a Juan in Mexico, or a Mary in Ireland. Once you find your ancestor in the sea of like – named individuals you may entertain the idea of naming your own descendants something unique or unconventional so that their children’s children will easily be able to locate them in the course of their genealogy research. Of course, there is the possibility that by the time your children’s grandchildren are thinking about their family history, your volumes of research will have been carefully preserved throughout the years and meticulously added to by each subsequent generation. Those are the things of genealogy daydreams.
Photo by imagefactory on morguefile.com.