April’s Theme and Week 14: Begins with a Vowel (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2023 Version)

The theme for Week 14 is "Begins with a Vowel." Chances are there is someone in your family tree whose name begins with a vowel... or lived in a place that begins with a vowel...  or had an occupation that begins with a vowel....  You get the idea ;-) Have fun with this week's prompt! Click here to check out all the themes for 2023.

I decided to look at my name list and see how many people’s names start with a Vowel. Therefore, names that start with an A, E, I, O or U. 

Therefore, I went to my Family Tree Maker program. My main tree has 19833 people. I knew I would need some sort of report that I could export to Excel and a count function to quickly add up the totals.

Under Publish, you will find all the reports for FTM. I decided to select a Custom report. I included “All Individuals”. Under Items to Include, I only needed the name field, thus I removed birth, marriage, death and spouse. I didn’t need any notes or sources and thus I unchecked those fields. I only needed the preferred name and thus this is the only check mark I have for fact options. Under Name options, I made sure the format was First Middle Last, so that the names are placed alphabetically by first name. I made sure all the other boxes are unchecked. This generated 405 pages. WOW!

Next, I needed to save this report in a format that Excel can read. Thus, I clicked on the Share button in the upper right-hand corner. Then I click, Export to CVS. Then I am going to export data as rows. Under the CSV Export Options, I leave the defaults and click “OK”. I select where I want to save my file, plus the name to use and then click Save. I won’t open it through the pop-up box, thus I click No. Next, I find my file and double click to open it.

I will delete the rows I don’t want by highlighting them in batches. Thus, I left click the first name, hold the mouse button, and drag it down to highlight multiple rows. I start in the number row area so that the entire row is selected. It will scroll faster, based on how far down the bottom of the screen I am scrolling. If I go to far, I just move my mouse back up the list. NEVER Letting go of the mouse button until I have what I want highlighted. If you goof up, press the ESC button and start over. Then I right click in the highlighted area, select Delete and the rows all disappear and the names starting with A will be in the first row. I will scroll down to find the B names and highlight all the B-D names. I will delete those rows and then I am left with the E names. I continue by deleting the F-H names, the J-N, the P-T and finally the V-Z names. 

Going back to the last A name, I insert a blank line. I can see that I have 1278 A names, because of the row numbers being displayed in Excel. However, it won’t be as easy for the other vowels. So, to check my formula, I will count the A names before using the formula for the other letters. In the blank row, column B, I use the following formula =COUNTA(A1:A1278) and it counts the cells that contain information.  

I make note that the E names start at 1280 and move down to the last E name. I will insert a blank line and input the =CountA formula in the blank row, column B with (A1280:A plus the row number of the last E names). I continue in this manner for all the vowels.

What did I discover in this process? I discovered that I have a lot blank first names. I input seven underscores for unknown names, whether it’s a first or last name. If I don’t know either name, then they get seven underscores followed by seven underscores.  I still have some unknown first names listed as “Unknown” and I need to change those to seven underscores, so this gave me the opportunity to clean up my tree and make it more consistent.

I created an Index Filter where I Filter In Names that contains Unknown. I found 27. Once you apply the filter, this is all I see in the Index list and I can go one by one, fixing those names. FTM will think this might be a duplicate person, just respond No to the pop-up box.

I also found out I have 21 as infant for first names. I did delete these from my totals. I also used numbers spelled out if I knew a couple had children but I didn’t have names. For example if they have three known children, I would put the first one is as One Last name, then Two last name and then Three last name. I even found Unknown1 Last Name Unknown 2 Last Name, Unknown3 Last Name. I even have one that is un-named Last Name. Perhaps I should have used First Child Last Name, Second Child Last Name, Third Child Last Name, this might have been easier. Or the first name should be seven underscores, and I could use one, two or three in the middle name. I know sometimes in the description field of the marriage fact I have inputted the number of children. I guess I need to revisit this and decided on one method so that my database is more consistent, which probably means the seven underscores. 

My mother’s name is an O name and is quite unusual since it is Orlien. My mother stated she was named after her grandmother, however the grandmother in question was named Wilina Ellen and was called Nellie. Her mother used Orlien as her middle name as an adult, however her birth certificate states it was Arlene. I did find a Orlena in my family tree and that is the closest to Orlien that I have found.

Anyway, I ended up with 1278 “A” names, 1251 “E” names, 180 “I” names, 119 “O” names and 6 “U” names. Thus, there are 2834 people in my tree whose name begins with a vowel.

Remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!