Surnames & Mononyms

 When beginning your genealogy journey, it’s wise to decide early on which version of a surname you’ll use consistently. This is especially important if you rely on tagging systems—such as Evernote—for organizing your research.

For example, in my own family I have relatives with the surname appearing as Skaggs, Scaggs, and Skegs. Early on, I chose to tag every related note simply as “Skaggs” to keep things uniform. Otherwise, I’d have to remember to search three different tags every time I wanted to find information on that family line—a needless complication.

I was going to write here on what the consensus is on which box to add a mononym, first name or surname? But it seems there is no consensus.  So I will do more research and come back to this.

Wikipedia: Mononyms

Wikipedia: List of legally mononymous people

One last thing about surnames - it has been a recent trend in my family that if we only have a mononym or a firstname for someone we will add their tribe to the surname OR their father's mononym as the surname (for example "Rachel Cornstalk") at first I didn't like this, it seemed inaccurate, but now I see the use for it - just trying to keep track of fathers! So now I like it.