Media Release: The Guild’s 7,000th member

The Guild of One-Name Studies has reached another milestone. Today the 7,000th member joined the Guild of One-Name Studies.Rosemary Potter, who lives in Bournemouth, UK. This milestone follows a very successful year for the Guild of One-Name Studies in 2014-15 when the Guild is likely to achieve its highest number of new members ever.
Since the 1st November 2014 312 new members joined the Guild of One-Name Studies, 181 were from the UK, 70 from the US, 6 from New Zealand, 28 from Australia, 16 from Canada and 4 from Ireland. The remainder were from various other countries. 42% of the new members were from non-UK regions, which is a valuable step towards increased worldwide membership for the Guild. The Guild now has over 2,790 members spread across the world, studying over 8,750 individual surnames.
Rosemary Potter is studying the surname Wixey, with the variants Wicksey, Wixcey, Weeksey and Wickey, and hopes that the Guild of One-Name Studies will enable her to help and link up with other people researching the name. Rosemary stated that she was delighted to join the Guild of One-Name Studies and looked forward to taking advantage of the numerous services and benefits the Guild provides. In 1881 there were 139 instances of the name in the UK census and by 1998 the frequency of the surname had increased to 204. The frequency and distribution of the Wixey name makes it an ideal example of a name suitable for a small one-name study.
In recognition of becoming the 7,000th member of the Guild of One-Name Studies, the Guild has extended Rosemary’s membership a further year to the 31st October 2017.
Details of all the Guild facilities can be found at:
Membership Benefits
where you can find out:
• more about undertaking a One-Name Study
• the benefits of joining the Guild of One-Name Studies, and the assistance members of the Guild can provide to anyone researching their family history on any of the 8,750-plus names currently being researched.
Cliff Kemball, the Guild’s Publicity Officer, said today:
“Attaining our 7,000th member is a significant milestone for the Guild of One-Name Studies and is a testament to the continued development of the Guild internationally and the benefits membership provides. We are sure that Rosemary will benefit significantly from joining the Guild and that she will gradually take advantage of the services and facilities that the Guild offers.”