Even when people moved elsewhere, their places of origin were still used to identify them. Some family names can be traced back to an ancestor's exact origin while others have lost their exact places of origin to obscurity. Names like Westwood and Churchill, for example can mean an ancestor used to live west of the woods and near a church on top of a hill, but which woods and which church? Research on their probate records, wills, bills of sale, plantation records, and advertisements of runaway slaves from newspapers. The next step is to focus in Africa. Just like what mentioned earlier, the slave Africans came from Africa as a form of slaves to American owners. Find any records about slave advertisements and slave sales which may you enough clues on how the slavery originated. Now that all the necessary information needed to start a family history were discussed, one needs to know the other sources aside from living relatives and public documents. There are several websites that could help anyone who would want to start with his own genealogical search. The leader of which are the LDS-compiled genealogy that resulted into the International Genealogical Index, which happens to be the largest compilation of genealogical data through microfilm. Document it all Of course, mere documentation is not enough. It is important that you document everything as carefully and as appropriately as possible. First things first, copy the book title, reel number of the microfilm, the number of the page, author, publication year, publisher and whatever detail you could see on the sheet cover. The free relationship between character and phonetics made writings of different and not related languages a possibility. Sinographs is the other term for Chinese characters thus their writing is called sinography. The usage and design of characters in the Chinese dictionary creates an interesting problem. If you're thinking of doing a genealogy search to find out more about your family tree, here are a few tips how: Start your genealogy search with the nearest source. That's your family. Ask your parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Start with what is current and then work backwards. Look at family Bibles, birth, death and marriage certificates, diaries, letters, military certificates and scrapbooks.