The origins of surnames in Britain and Ireland

The origins of more than 45,000 surnames have been revealed by a new study.

The findings have been published in the Oxford English Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.

The project's leader, Professor Richard Coates, told the Today programme "to the best of our knowledge everyone who has a name borne by 100 people or more will be in the dictionary", but at a later phase they hoped to bring that figure down to 20.

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