Updating My Genealogy Surname Word Cloud—and a Little Blog Housekeeping

As I'm winding down my end-of-summer staycation, I took time to do a little housecleaning on my blog. Below are the updates I made to the general layout.

• Removed links to social media sites I'm no longer monitoring. Ancestry (patndoris94) or Threads (@patndoris) have evolved into the best "off-blog" ways to contact me. Of course, you're always welcome to leave comments directly on any posts here on Blogger! 
• Added a text link to show I'm a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). 
• Updated disclosures to include how I use ChatGPT for titles, search descriptions, and to review posts for clarity, punctuation and grammar. I will continue to use disclosures on individual posts as well.
• Updated disclosures to clarify that prices and features of any site I review were current at the time the post was published.
• Updated my notice regarding sharing to clarify it's fine to share my posts on other social media sites by linking directly to a post.
• And my favorite! It's been 2 years since I posted my first surname word cloud using ChatGPT. I've updated it to reflect the current distribution of names in my tree. The current surname word cloud appears in my sidebar.

Take a little peek at the changes to my surname distribution. The first image is the newly generated image for 2026. The second picture is the original surname cloud from 2024. While they look similar, some of the names have grown in font size, indicating I now have more of these family members in my tree. My original 2024 image was based on 677 individual surnames. The new 2026 image is based on 971 individual surnames—an increase of approximately 43%!

Surname word cloud 2026

Surname word cloud 2024

Generating a word cloud with ChatGPT is very easy! I used the Publish feature of Family Tree Maker (FTM) to create a Surname Report. I chose to include all individuals, but you can also select immediate family, extended family, or choose specific individuals. I generated the report and then exported it to a CSV file. I removed the total line (otherwise the word Total will be included as a surname). Then I asked ChatGPT to create a word cloud using the attached CSV file, with the font size reflecting the number of individuals for each surname. I was happy with the default colors it used last time, but you could absolutely prompt it to use alternate color schemes if you wish.

As always, I'm thankful for everyone who stops by to read my blog. I'm especially grateful to those who regularly share my posts so they can reach more family historians, and to those who comment to let me know when a post resonates in some way. I know housekeeping updates aren't exciting, but I do want to be transparent—especially about my use of AI and how to best share my content with others.

Disclosure: I used ChatGPT to create my surname word cloud. I also used ChatGPT to assist with a title and search description, and to review this post for clarity, punctuation and grammar. Unless otherwise indicated, the content and all opinions are my own.

Using ChatGPT Plus to Create a Surname Word Cloud

I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for $20/month. It's a month to month subscription so I can cancel anytime if I'm not finding enough use for it. I genuinely enjoyed using the free version to create one of my recent bio sketches. This past week, I've been reading more articles and posts about using ChatGPT for genealogy and my curiosity is piqued.

With the Plus version, not only can you customize how ChatGPT interacts with you (I've told it I'd like responses to be centered around genealogy), but you can upload and analyze files and create AI images. Additionally, the Plus version gains access to ChatGPT 4, to search more up to date information, is faster and provides better results. It's still important to remember, AI is not infallible, please double check any important information before sharing. There are a few other benefits with speed during peak access periods and stability, but they weren't critical in solidifying my decision to give ChatGPT Plus a try. 

To test out how well it handles file analysis, I decided I'd like to create a surname word cloud. I always enjoy seeing these when others share them, and while I've tried some of the word cloud generators, I was just never really thrilled with them. ChatGPT made the process totally painless! For this test, I exported a Surname Report from Family Tree Maker 2019 (FTM). The resulting CSV contained 677 unique surnames, including the count for each. It also included columns for how many instances were male or female. I removed those extra columns and included only surnames and overall count in my file. The AI analyzed the file and responded "The data from your file is structured with two columns: "Surname" and "Count". I will use this information to create a word cloud where the size of each surname is proportional to its count. Let's proceed with creating the word cloud." It then displayed the image for me. The colors it used by default work well with my blog theme, so I didn't even need to ask it to tweak the image.

Needless to say, I was pretty impressed! So much, in fact, I'm going to include the surname cloud on my sidebar. Since it was SO easy to create, I won't hesitate to update it from time to time. This is a pretty simple example of how to use AI to analyze a file and provide useful output. I'll continue to post on how I'm using AI as a part of my blog and my research. (If you'd like to see a larger version of my surname cloud, just click on the image above).