is everyone with the same last name related?

Question

if so, is there a site where youcan find all your distant relatives?

Answer 1

It is rare that everyone with the same name is related, although it does happen once in a great while. You can stop at a place like genforum (or others) where they have surname sections. All will be searching the same name, but at the same time, working to distinguish which are from what core family.
Here is a tip... just starting in research, the standard advice is work from yourself backwards. In your immediate family, you KNOW (and verify) those relatives. Next, to the grandparents, and their children.. thus you insure those are related. You continue the process, one generation at a time. As you go, it focuses on the desc. of John Smith and Mary Jones, of (say) Missouri. You look mainly at the Smiths in that immediate area, instead of what I call "throwing darts" at any one with the Smith name, and hoping they are connected.
My other personal tip is to shift the thinking from ANY one site as being where you will find all the information. Look at it as a combination of thousands of tiny facts, but interconnected. These facts are all over the net.. the more sites you find, the more luck you have. And it isn't all online, either.
Come on in, the waters fine.

Answer 2

You might be related, but it is not guaranteed. The more rare the name is, the more likely you are to be related. 1) Names are essentially words and can originate in more than place independently of each other. The common example is Lee originated independently in England and China. 2) When surnames were 1st adopted in Europe they identified an individual (not a family) by one of 4 factors: 1) their father's given name 2) a description 3) where they lived or 4) their occupation. There was more than one son of John (Johnson), guy with White hair, guy from a Hill, and guy that was a blacksmith (Smith) and they may not be related at all. Tracing the name back to the originator may lead to different and unrelated people. 3) Since then names have changed or been adopted for various reasons. German Muellers have become Millers (English variant), no relation to Millers. Some Vaughns, Baughns, and Vaughans have become Bonds so not all Bonds are related. Colonized or enslaved people often take names from the dominate culture, no relation. Some folks just change their name to something they've heard and like, no relation. However, it has been said that everyone on earth is related in very distant degrees. Some have said 20th cousins. Some have said everyone in Europe is no more than 14th cousins. Another proposition from DNA studies suggests that everyone alive today is the descendant of a man that lived around 60-140KYA and a woman that lived around 200KYA. So, how related or how distant may influence the semantics here. Also, different cultures (and individuals) pass down surnames in different ways.

Answer 3

Not necessarily

Often last names developed out of locations or out of professions - for example, the English name "Smith" usually indicates some ancestor was a smith (blacksmith). Blacksmiths at opposite ends of the country may have wound up using this, so their descedants are not necessarily related.

For geneology, you'll want to start with the names and birth and death dates (and locations) for all the relatives you know of. The further you can go back the better. Then you can check a site like ancestry.com, or one of the other geneology sites and try and see if one of those ancestors has already been researched by someone else and put on the net.

Answer 4

Absolute not!

There was a time when people didn't have surnames. William son of John, if he could write, signed his name William son of John.
Eventually sons of guys name John became Johnson. They weren't all related

The suffix lin means lineage of.

Some took the name of their occupation,
George the miller, became George Miller but other millers took the name Miller. There are lot of occupational names, Baker,
Carpenter, Barber, Smith, Fisher and the list goes on and on.

Some were habitational names. They took the name of the town they were from or the castle they lived close to. I have Overtons in my mother's family and the name means over town. You can imagine how many people lived over a town. Sam that lived on a hill became Sam Hill but there were others living on a hill that took the name Hill.
People took the name of the church they lived close to, maybe a lake or a swamp.

That is the problem with people buying coats of arms from the peddlers that sell them. They are buying them because they have their surname and they have no documented proof that they are entitled to them.

Information in family trees on any website must be taken as clues not as fact as most is not documented. Even if you see the same information over and over by different submitters a lot of copying is being done.

The best thing is to get as much information as possible from family, particularly senior members. Tape them if they will let you. What might seem to be insignificant ramblings and story telling might turn out to be very significant.

If your library has a genealogy section, browse it. They also might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com and they have all the census records thru 1930.

Go to LDS Center (Mormon Church). They have records on people all over the world
and they are very nice and helpful. I have never had them to come ringing my doorbell because I availed myself of their service.

Answer 5

No. Everyone named "Jackson" and "Williams" and "Simpson" had an ancestor who was the son of Jack or the son of William or the son of Simon, but they may have been from different ends of England. They were probably English, unless they were Irish or Scottish - or German and changed their name in 1914, or Polish and changed their name after they got here.

There are 250,000 sites for looking up your distant ancestors. Write if you are interested in a list.

Answer 6

No, There are actullay Surname projects in Genetics to Identify differences in people who share the same surname.
If your Surname is from an occupation then alot of people took such names and have no genetic connection what so ever. Many people took the names of places,fuedal lords, and patrons. So if you share a Surname with someone you would need to document things to prove you have and relationship to one another. I myself carry one of the most common Surnames and many people will think we are related but if they can't document it or if they choose to test there DNA agaisnt mine I'm always helpful but most usually are not,we just share common surnames.

Answer 7

We are all creations of God--we all have that in common! And it's a small world with a really BIG cousin pool! But as far as last names, there are SO MANY variables. I have a husband and wife that have side-by-side tombstones , and they have spelled their last name two different ways! DistantCousins.com?

Answer 8

No, all people with the same surname are not necessarily related. That would be as if ... there had once been only one (black)Smith, only one Cook, and only one Hill, and only one John to be son of.

Answer 9

Not really, due to Ellis Island, many people were renamed coming into America and their last name is not truly their birth name.

Also consider maiden names, you are related to many females whos names are lost in the marriage mix

Answer 10

No, odds are unless a last name is very unusual, people sharing it won't necessarily be related. How do I know?
My last name is Smith.