Name variants

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday, so first of all Happy Thanksgiving to all U.S. Condrans, Condrens, Condrins and Condrons! I don't know exactly how many people that is, but at the time of the 1930 census (the most recent U.S. census to be publicly viewable), the index on ancestry.com shows there were 1488 people in the U.S.A. with the name CONDR?N (where ? stands for any one letter), namely 226 CONDRANs, 336 CONDRENs, 31 CONDRINs and 906 CONDRONs. (The reason these numbers don't add up to exactly 1488 is presumably that a few entries have been indexed under more than one spelling.)

As this one-name study has developed, I have realized that surnames can often be misspelled, and that names people go by can evolve according to local pronunciations etc. particularly in the nineteenth century and earlier, before widespread literacy. I do still regard CONDON as a distinct name different from the ones under study here (even though CONDRON can sometimes be misspelled in the records as CONDON). But the following name variants can I think all be considered to be related, and therefore relevant to this one-name study. I have grouped them according to their being most common, uncommon, rare, and then those instances that possibly only occur as misspellings.

Most common
CONDREN, CONDRON, CONRAN

Uncommon
CONDRAN, CONRON

Rare
CONARON, CONDERAN, CONDRIN, CON(N)ERAN, CON(N)ORAN, CONRYN

Possibly only occur as misspellings
CONARAN, CONDERON, CONDORAN, CONDORON, CONDRUN, CONERIN, CON(N)ERON, CONORON, CONREN, CONRIN

I stand ready to be corrected!

It is interesting to speculate whether CONDRON and CONRAN, for instance, are more ancient in usage than CONDRAN, say, and if so whether CONDRAN is a corruption deriving originally from CONDRON or from CONRAN.

So to summarize, the names whose instances need to be collected in pre-twentieth century records in order to try to understand present-day distributions and origins of CONDRANs, CONDRENs, CONDRINs and CONDRONs are of the form CON*R?N, where ? is a single letter and * is any number of letters (including none); but excluding names of the form CONC*R?N which I consider to be distinct from those under study here. In searching indices etc. for possibly occurrences of the study names, I use these searches with the wildcards * and ? when the search engines permit:
CONA*R?N
COND*R?N
CONE*R?N
CONN*R?N
CONO*R?N
CONR?N

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

CONDRANs on Facebook

I just checked the number of CONDRANs on Facebook, using the family name search facility at http://www.facebook.com/family/ . It shows 210 entries for CONDRAN. Not all of these entries are unique, and I reckon some CONDRAN Facebook users are missing. Also, of course, this search doesn't find married women who were called CONDRAN but who haven't retained CONDRAN in their married name. From these entries I can readily identify the geographical location of 84 users of Facebook with the name CONDRAN: there are 41 in the USA, 30 in Australia, 11 in Canada, and one each in the the UK and in mainland Europe (France/Portugal). In the USA, the principal location of CONDRANs in this sample is Pennsylvania. In Australia, the principal location of CONDRANs is New South Wales.

A great place on Facebook to connect with other CONDRANs is the Condran Clan group. You can try going directly to it at

http://www.facebook.com/groups/2408036585

and if that doesn't work just search for "Condran Clan" on Facebook.