The Guild of One Name Studies in it’s book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom¹ describes a One-Name Study as:
“The whole object of one-name research is to study the whole of a family in depth, its migrations, the relationship of various branches, how each has developed its own line and social position, its religious and political beliefs, occupations etc. – merely collecting every instance of the name is not by any means sufficient.”
Iain Swinnerton: founder member and Vice President of the Guild of One-Name Studies
So, although the foundation of this study is the aim to collect all data relating to individuals bearing the Swalwell surname, or its variants², that is by no means the limit of the study.
Ultimately the ambition is to utilise the data gathered to:
- identify early references to the surname
- understand the name’s meaning & origin
- explore the various forms of the surname in terms of true variants² & being able to distinguish them from the deviant² forms of the name
- investigate the “Swalwell” population or populations and understand their characteristics, e.g. frequency, relative to the general population
- analyse its distribution geographically & over time
- establish the patterns of migration associated with its distribution
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