How to find an obituary by name

List every version of the name

A name is rarely written the same way in every place. Before you search, take a few minutes to write down all the forms the person may have used. This short list will do more for your search than any website.

• The full legal name, including a middle name or initial.
• Nicknames and short forms, such as Bill for William, Peggy for Margaret or Bob for Robert.
• A maiden name, and any earlier married names.
• Suffixes such as Jr., Sr. or III, which are often dropped or added.
• Other spellings, for example Catherine, Kathryn and Katherine, or names with and without a hyphen or accent.

Obituaries are usually written by family members, so the name in the notice is often the one the family used every day, not the one on official papers.

Make a search engine work harder

Put the name in quotation marks so the search engine looks for those words together. Then add the word obituary outside the quotes. For example, "Harold Jenkins" obituary.

If the person used a middle initial, search both ways. "Harold P. Jenkins" and "Harold Jenkins" can return quite different results. You can also search with the last name first, because some lists and indexes show names as Jenkins, Harold.

A few simple tools help cut down the noise:

• Add a minus sign before a word to leave it out, for example -football if a famous namesake keeps showing up.
• Add site: followed by a website address to search only one site, such as a local newspaper or a funeral home.
• Use the search engine’s Tools or date filter to show only pages from the past month or year.

Search small sites by last name only

Funeral home websites and small newspaper sites often have simple search boxes. These boxes can be strict. If you type Bill and the notice says William, you may get nothing back.

On these sites, search for the last name alone and scan the list. For a short list, this takes only a minute and avoids missing a notice because of a first name, a middle name or a typo. If the last name is long or unusual, try just the first few letters in case it was misspelled.

Keep in mind that typos happen in obituaries too. A notice is often written quickly, in the first hard days after a death, and a letter can be dropped or swapped. If a last name could be spelled two ways, such as Thompson and Thomson, search both.

Search memorial sites and indexes by name

Large memorial websites gather notices from many funeral homes and newspapers. Their search tools are usually better than a small funeral home site. Many let you enter a first and last name, then filter by state, city and date. Start broad with the name and state, then narrow if the list is long.

Grave and cemetery websites can also be searched by name. They often show birth and death years, which can confirm you have the right person and tell you when to look for the obituary. For older deaths, a death index can do the same job.

Try each name version from your list on these sites, not just the legal name. A search for Peggy may find a notice that a search for Margaret misses.

Add one detail at a time

When a name search brings back too many results, add details slowly. Adding everything at once can hide the right notice if one detail is slightly off.

• The city or state where the person lived last, or where they grew up.
• A spouse’s first name, since obituaries usually list close family.
• An approximate age or birth year.
• A job, employer, church or military branch.

Try the name plus the town first. If that fails, try the name plus a spouse. Obituaries often say where the person was born, where they worked and who survives them, so any of these can pull the right notice to the top.

Check that you found the right person

Once you find a notice with the right name, read it closely before you rely on it. Two people with the same name can live in the same area, and some are even related.

Compare the age, the places mentioned and the names of family members with what you know. If a photo is included, that can help too. When the details line up, save a copy or a screenshot, since some pages change or come down later. Our guide on how long obituaries stay online explains why.

If the name is very common and you still have many possible matches, see how to find an obituary for a common name for more ways to sort them.

Keep a simple search log

If you are searching over several days, write down each name version you tried and each site you checked, with the date. This keeps you from repeating the same searches and shows what is left to try.

If nothing turns up, the notice may not be posted yet, or the family may not have published one. Our guide on what to do if there is no obituary covers other ways to confirm a death.

If you need to keep watching a name over weeks or months, an obituary monitoring service can check funeral homes, newspapers and memorial sites each day and email you when a notice with a matching name appears. You can add the name variations from your list so fewer notices slip past.