What your surname says about you - video explainer

A team of researchers has spent four years studying the meanings and origins of almost 50,000 surnames of British and Irish records back to 11th century, from the most common to the highly obscure. Some names have been around for many centuries while other more recent arrivals are explained for the first time in the work, the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, which is published on Thursday

• Dictionary of 50,000 surnames and their origins published