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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain

edited by Dr Harry Parkin

This is a reference book on a massive scale: 1,010 pages, with 43,500 family names in the dictionary (over half of which are variants, cross-referenced). The criteria for a family name to be listed in the dictionary included that it need to have 30 or more bearers of the name in the UK in 2011. The follows on from the 2016 four-volume publication, , which comprises more than 45,000 names. As with any Oxford reference book there is a detailed and comprehensive introduction at the start which covers information that we might expect to find such as the typology of English names and their relationship, occupational and nickname origins. There is coverage of family names in Scots-speaking Scotland, Manx, Welsh and Cornish family names. Included too is background information on surnames originating from worldwide: family names from Africa, to China, Turkey and so forth. These introductory notes all make for vital reading explaining the varied adoption of and inheritance of family names worldwide, which we find in Britain today. As would be