If you patronize your local library or historical society to research your ancestors, analyze censuses, or dive into 19^th-century marriage records, you may have more in common with a modern pop star than you think. In her hit song “Picture You,” Chappell Roan ponders,..

My interest in genealogy, and in my own family history, stemmed from my family name: Laxague. I was always told that this name, pronounced differently by every unknowing substitute teacher who encountered its jumble of vowels and further confounding “x,” was Basque...