About Us
We are a family run web site, that has built up a database of surname origins over the last 20 years.
The research was started by the founder of "Name Origin Research" Michael Brook and the requests for surname
researches came in via mail order and off the page advertising. The business grew to a team of 5 researchers
based in the Republic of Ireland, and ran for many years before the mail order market became much tougher
and business became unprofitable.
For the last 5 or 6 years the database remained pretty much under lock and key, with Micheal adding the odd name
every now and then as he came across names of special interest. Then in October 2006 we decided that rather than
let the database fester, we would open it up to the world at large via this wonder fully medium we refer to as the
world wide web. So we knocked up a quick site complete with numerous bugs, and added a little contextual advertising
in the form of Google Adwords to cover the operating costs.
The web site was far more successful than we originally anticipated, which got us excited and we started to come up
with lots of ideas, about how it would be great if we could add this or that. So we went back to the drawing board
and came up with this site. We hope that it will become a friendly place to discover and share information on family
surnames, and we hope that you enjoy playing with it... if not we want to know why not, so fill in the feedback form :-)
It's also worth mentioning that nearly all of the research in our database was conducted prior to the invention of the world
wide web. With all the information now at our finger tips we should be able to greatly expand our knowledge on the probable
origin of surnames. If you think we have it wrong, please add your theories and findings as comments on the surname origin tab,
so others can profit from the information.
Updated 27th of February 2007: Charlie Brook (Webmaster)
