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Surnames: Meanings, Origins and Distribution Maps
- gnarbarian 11y agoThis is cool. But it was wrong for my mother's name bonnar. http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?fuseaction=Go.&Surname=Bonnar http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?fuseact...
- epimetheus 11y agoInteresting, This site claims that there are only 581 people with my surname in the world.
- brudgers 11y agoMy impression, sample size one, is that it may under estimate when it relies on public records because children ate less likely to be counted in some jurisdictions.
- mcginleyr1 11y agoWrong for McGinley www.mcginleyclan.org
- rjtobin 11y agoThe surname meaning for "Tobin" is also wrong, it comes from a Norman surname "de Saint Aubyn", which I guess the native Irish had a hard time pronouncing. The website suggested it came from "son of Tobias" (which I guess might have happened at some point, but is not the usually given history of the name). Interesting that the three surnames with incorrect histories highlighted in the comments (so far) are all of Irish origin. Maybe the site is particularly poor with Irish surname origins?
- joe5150 11y ago"Approximately 16 people bear this surname" That actually sounds a bit high.
- niccaluim 11y agohttp://forebears.io/surnames/nicdomhnaill http://forebears.io/surnames/nicdomhnaill Any surname starting with "Nic" and ending with a Gaelic personal name is a woman's surname. Nic is a contraction of "nighean mhic" (Scottish) / "iníon mhic" (Irish), meaning "daughter of a son of," and is equivalent to Mac (son of) for girls and women. This particular name is the feminine Gaelic form of MacDomhnall (MacDonald in English), though it's misspelled. The initial consonant in Domhnall should be lenited to produce NicDhomhnaill, and if it's Scottish, there should be a grave over the "o."
- pandatigox 11y agoI think it's interesting how my surname - 'kim' is more prevalent in North Korea and (surprisingly) Uzbekistan than South Korea
- trynumber9 11y agoThere were about 170,000 Koreans forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan during Stalin's rule. That might have something do with it. But, from Wikipedia, the ROK has about 20% of its population with the surname Kim/Gim/Ghim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Korean_family_names.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Kor...
- vixen99 11y agoLife is too short to spend it deciphering these confusing map icons.
- richardw 11y agoI've wondered at how, despite surnames being our "clan" or "family" names (and therefore a collection of people) and our first being our individual names, I seem to meet many more people who share firstnames than surnames. Any way of telling how wrong I am?
- kissickas 11y agoI would say you're probably right. With surnames as the set and first names as individual elements, the elements can be shared much more often while the set needs to be a unique identifier. There's only one United States of America and one Illinois, but there's a Springfield and Riverside in nearly every state and they all have a Main Street. Also, people gravitate towards naming their children after people (or just names) they like, whereas very few change their surname.
- adaml_623 11y agoOne problem with this sort of 'Genealogical' website is their total English language tunnel vision. If your surname is short then it will probably have multiple source and saying the equivalent of "Surnameis 'Smith' therefore your family were once black smiths" is missing the fact that if your name came from a different country then that word means something different. Maybe in the future they'll get more sophisticated.
- de_Selby 11y agoByrne is wrong too. It seems a lot of the entries are wrong based on people's comments here.