If you are serious about your genealogical research, eventually you will always end up wondering (and then trying to work out) whether all the people who share the surname you're interested in, and live in the same village or town, are related. As Feinstein is the name I was born with, I wanted to create a database for this surname, and to register it as a one-name study.

I am particularly interested in the patterns and waves of migration. I know there are hundreds of Feinsteins in the UK, the US, South Africa, and elsewhere, but I don't yet know if they all came from Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Ukraine. I am excited about tracing the patterns of migration and the networks of families, their occupations, naming patterns, and everything else I can discover. Also, how many Feinsteins married other Feinsteins?

My own family begins with Levin Feinstein in eighteenth-century Palanga (Polangen), on the Baltic coast of Lithuania, famous for its amber. The pronunciation in my branch of the family is Fine-steen, but others pronounce it Fine-stine.

Some Feinsteins changed their name - I have already collected Fenn, Fenston, Fentin, Fenton, Ferris, Fields, Fine, Finniston, Finston, Firestone, Fontaine, Forrest, Foster, Franklin, Fyne, and Stone and others. Some changed their name to Feinstein from something else, making the research even more interesting!

Variant spellings include Fainshteyn, Fainshtein, Fajnsztejn, Fajnstejn, Feynshteyn, Feinsteinyte, Feinshtein. In my initial searches in English-speaking countries, I am concentrating on the exact spelling Feinstein.

For the UK records, I have explored the variants Fainstein, Fienstien, Fenstein, Finestein (there are not so many of these). I am not yet working on Finestone.

As I move back to the "Russian" births, I'm starting to record what the spellings (transliterations) are in the relevant databases, e.g. for Belarus I am finding Vainshtein, Fainshtein, Faynshtein, Faynshteyn.

I was told as a young child at school that the name means "fine stone", i.e. jewellery. The Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press says: "Jewish (Ashkenazic): ornamental name composed of German fein ‘fine’ + Stein ‘stone’".

In the UK census, there were no Feinsteins (exact spelling) until 1861 (just one person, from Warsaw). In 1891 there are just 36 entries. In 1901 there are 52, and in 1911 there are 50. The England & Wales Civil Registration Birth Index 1916-2007 has just 72 Feinsteins (exact spelling).

The 1921 UK census has 47 Feinsteins, born in London, Hull, Vilna, Odessa, Poland, Russia, Romania, Lithuania, Salonika, and Tulchin (Ukraine).

The 1939 Register has 44 people.

The earliest US birth I have so far is 1880 in New York, and the US Social Security Applications and Claims Index 1936-2007 has 748 people with a father who was a Feinstein. The California Birth Index 1905-95 has 474.

The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry has 1130 Feinsteins.

I will be collecting data from every country.

I am interested in hearing from any Feinsteins who have the results of autosomal or Y-DNA tests.

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