Thousands of Customized Surname History Books

BookSurge, part of the Amazon.com, Inc., is collaborating with Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, to make the Our Name in History series, comprised of more than a quarter of a million books, available on Amazon.com. The surname book collection was created using historical records dating from the 1600s to provide a blend of interesting facts, statistics and commentary about the history of the most common 279,000 last names in America. Now millions of Amazon.com customers can purchase a keepsake about either their own last name or that of their favorite actor, president or media mogul and have it printed on demand by BookSurge.

"The Our Name in History series leverages Ancestry.com's unmatched historical data to chronologically trace a particular last name and tell its story through interesting facts placed in a historical context," said David Symonds, general manager, BookSurge. "These unique books offer hard-to-find historical information on hundreds of thousands of common U.S. surnames and make a great holiday gift for friends and family."

The 279,000 last names represented in the Our Name in History series account for nearly 90 percent of all U.S. households, according to the 2002 U.S. White Pages. To create these books, Ancestry.com studied more than five billion names from U.S. Census data, as well as immigration, birth, marriage, death, military and other historical records to detail origin, definition, popularity and other facts unique to each name.

Website: www.amazon.com/myfamily