History
The Guild developed as an off-shoot of the Federation of Family History Societies. The FFHS was founded on 8 June 1974. By 1977 one-third of the members of the FFHS were one-name societies, and a sub-committee was set up to address the needs of this group. Among its duties was the generation of a Register of Surnames which were being comprehensively studied. The first one-name conference was held at the Grand Hotel in Leicester from 13 to 14 May 1978. Sixty-six participants attended the inaugural conference. A formal resolution was carried unanimously to establish a Guild of individuals engaged in one-name research. The Guild was officially launched in Plymouth, Devon, on 1 September 1979 during a conference hosted by the family history societies of Devon and Cornwall. Within a few months, approximately 200 members had enrolled in the Guild. To qualify for registration, one needed to have a significant body of data relating to the given surname and its variants. It was suggested that entries be extracted from current telephone directories, civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths, and national probate indexes such as the Prerogative Courts of Canterbury and York.
The decision to call it a guild was partly inspired by the notion that medieval guilds had encouraged professionalism along with mutual aid, as well as by a whimsical desire to create the acronym GOONS, evoking a popular British radio humorous show, The Goon Show, and making a self-mocking comment on the quixotic nature of one-name studies.
As a small organisation, the Guild has no employed staff. It has co-operated closely with the Halsted Trust, created by legacy, which promotes one-name studies.
While one-name studies have mainly been popular in Britain, thanks to that country's unified and open vital records, the Guild has always officially insisted that every study it recognises should be worldwide in scope, and has sought to cater for non-British studies in its basic methodological advice.
Read more about this topic: Guild Of One-Name Studies
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