Tech Forum

The sorting routine for surnames needs help. Especially Irish and Scottish have problems when there is a prefix, such as Mac, Mc, O', or Fitz.
When I ask for the Fitzherbert surname, Family Search does not see that as different from Herbert, and mixes them together.
It is extremely frustrating to go through 10 or more screens of Herbert trying to find my Fitzherbert ancestors.
This seems to be a recent development, I used to get much more focused results from the search option.
Maybe you have put too many "search" buttons, but it is NOT working well. PLEASE fix this! Thanks, Sue Rodman

You need to bring this up in the FamilySearch help forums. The developers don't read this forum.

rodmans wrote:The sorting routine for surnames needs help. Especially Irish and Scottish have problems when there is a prefix, such as Mac, Mc, O', or Fitz.
When I ask for the Fitzherbert surname, Family Search does not see that as different from Herbert, and mixes them together.
It is extremely frustrating to go through 10 or more screens of Herbert trying to find my Fitzherbert ancestors.

I assume you are talking about the Find by Name feature (what you are describing doesn't really sound like sorting, which refers to the order in which names are displayed).

It is true that FamilySearch will, by default, include name variants. This is often very helpful, since it is common that the Mc or O' is added or removed through generations. However, if you want to restrict your search results to only exact name matches, then you need to check the box to the right of the surname. That will provide only search results that match the name exactly.