I've just written an article, published by the German Genealogy Group and Dick Eastman's newsletter on Surnames. Cutting to the bottom line - Most complex surnames have been spelled many ways over the years. In my 20+ years of research, I have made the most progress in the past few years since genealogy sites allowed wildcards, which, when I tried to look up my surname, you do not. My name is Vornlocker. I have proven relatives, alive today, with the names Vornlocher, Farnlacher, Farnlucher. THe original surname in 1600 Austria was Vachenlueger or Fachenlueger, which, in old German, means the place where the wild pigs hide. I can't tell you how many variations took place over the centuries, but my wildcard search is V*rnl*er or F*rnl*er.
I doubt I would have found half of my primary source documents without wildcards. May I suggest that, as a starter, you either allow users to search surnames by letter(s) or even better wildcards.
I believe the most difficult issue in joining the world into one tree is the different spellings of the same original surname. If you are interested I can site many examples from my tree - 6 of 8 great-grandparents were German, the seventh a Ryder (German/Dutch) , the eighth a Skidmore (Scidmore, Scudamore, etc.) Need I say more.
