DIME A DOZEN

Fans of 1970s Westerns might recall a TV series titled “Alias Smith and Jones,” in which a pair of outlaws try to go straight. To keep a low profile and earn a pardon, they adopt as pseudonyms two of the most common surnames in the country.

If your own genealogy “most wanted” ancestors have similar surnames, this Old West yarn might feel painfully familiar: Finding folks named Smith and Jones—or Brown, Williams, Miller or other all-too-common surnames—can be like trying to identify a single steer in a cattle drive.

You might think that, with a last name like “Fryxell,” I’d have no worries about too-common surnames. (In fact, I even wrote about researching ancestors with offb eat last names; you can find that article at <www.familytreemagazine.com/names/unusual-last-names>.)

But inevitably, even the most exotically named families have Smiths and Joneses in their roots. My mother’s family were Dickinsons, and a few generations back I run into Browns. My and my wife’s Scandinavian ancestors share innumerable Anderson, Johnson, Erickson and other- and- patronymic surnames. My family files are full of names like “Ole Anderson”—all separate people, many of them not directly related.