a genealogical project researching all occurrences of a surname, as opposed to a particular pedigree (ancestors of one person) or descendancy (descendants of one person or couple)
a project, carried out by a single person, or a group, researching all occurrences of a particular surname and its variants, throughout the world, over all recorded time
A one-name study is a collection of vital and other biographical data about all persons worldwide sharing a particular surname. The raw data is extracted from national or published indexes. The one-name researcher seeks to identify all persons, living and dead, who have used the surname, and builds a database which keys the data from the different indexes to those individuals.