19 ms·

Map of Surnames in Europe

288 points by Nitrolo 5y ago

goombacloud 5y ago
Data is not clean, I doubt people have the surname "Computer" or "Bahnhof" (train station) in Germany
- theomega 5y ago
  Also search for City names which yields very suspicious results: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Hamburg&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Hamburg&s=Sear... https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Berlin&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Berlin&s=Searc... https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=M%FCnchen&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=M%FCnchen&s=Se... I don't think there are that many people called like cities and also they don't all live in those cities.
  - advanced-DnD 5y ago
    Data set is broken... he just want to earn some HN traffic and ads money
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marcodiego 5y ago
For some reason it is lacking Portugal: https://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/ https://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/
- cataphract 5y ago
  Portugal is such an homogeneous country that this is basically a map of population density x national frequency of the surname. Only exception I found is Viegas, which has a higher than expected concentration in Algarve.
- eridan2 5y ago
  Spanish site has a link to the Portuguese one - https://www.mapadeapellidos.eu/en/ https://www.mapadeapellidos.eu/en/ - list of countries under the map
brnt 5y ago
Where does it obtain data in countries without registries (such as France)?
- baud147258 5y ago
  doesn't France conduct census? I'm pretty sure I had to get registered when I reached the majority age. And, according to other comments, the website used phone books (which existed in France)
  - brnt 5y ago
    When I moved there, I didn't have to, or could, notify anyone I was living there.
tompagenet2 5y ago
Is this normalised at all? It always seems to look like a map of where cities are, although there are some interesting trends, especially if you pick surnames that have more recently become prevalent in a country.
- pwg 5y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- aasasd 5y ago
  Presumably not normalized—but I still can see the trends, e.g. of top two surnames in Ireland, one is more popular in south and the other in north.
- archi42 5y ago
  Doesn't seem like it is, and the sibling xkcd is spot on. For rare surnames it's still possible to see trends, especially if you know the high-density areas. I tried some random surnames for Germany, and while Klein ("Small") is pretty popular, the Latin variant Minor has some obvious hotspot: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=minor https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=minor Also, TIL: "Ficken" (=to f...k) seems to be a (rare) surname in the northern parts of Lower Saxony.
- asveikau 5y ago
  Might vary a lot based on the country and the name chosen. Eg. Italy has only been a single state since the 1860s, and regional languages can surface a lot of differences. I entered my mom's southern Italian maiden name and got pretty high correlation to places where her dad's family had ties...
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  My surname is Polish, sort of, and it’s typically more associated with what was historically northeast Poland/Vilnius. If you search my surname (Sielicki) you can see how there was a resettlement between the lands lost on the east and gained in the west after WWII.
karlerss 5y ago
Basically just population maps - https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- DaedPsyker 5y ago
  In my case not, I have a pretty rare last name. The map does show it's heavily regional with just a few scatterings elsewhere.
- kuboble 5y ago
  Not at all. For example here is a picture comparing mine and my wife's surnames. https://i.gyazo.com/f67aae30e098a5f9d1e13fdf58f638e4.png https://i.gyazo.com/f67aae30e098a5f9d1e13fdf58f638e4.png
- wink 5y ago
  For (very) common names, yes. Checked mine and a few other rare ones on the German map and it 100% matches the few people I know of, or the region where they hail from.
- gpvos 5y ago
  Even for very common Dutch surnames like Jansen, Smit and De Vries you see interesting differences.
  - Someone 5y ago
    For the Netherlands, https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/index.php?taal=eng/ https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/index.php?taal=eng/ is a better source. It has an (IMO) better visualization and can compensate for population density. Invalshoek expect it to have better data. (And for first names, there’s https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english)
    - gpvos 5y ago
      Ah yes, I wanted to link to the Meertens Familienamenbank too, which apparently has been taken over by the CBG several years ago.
elaus 5y ago
Very interesting, especially for less popular or more regional names. Would love to know more about how it's done: What is the source of those mapping between names and geo locations? Public phone books to get the address and then some reverse geo-coding?
- gitowiec 5y ago
  Exactly! How come it knows where I live?
  - tsujp 5y ago
    Census data would be one way, e.g. (one of many) for the UK. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/census-records/#5-people-in-the-census https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mazr 5y ago
  Here's some of the sources I've seen when working on that topic [1] : Census data, Phone books, Academic bibliographic databases (web of science, pubmed), list of athletes at olympic games, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, ... [1] https://antonomase.fr/fi/mazieres_bms_names.pdf https://antonomase.fr/fi/mazieres_bms_names.pdf you'll find the references to some of these examples.
wiz21c 5y ago
How did they geolocate the surnames ? Mine is pretty unique in my country and it's located in the town where I live. Where did they got this information from ?
- Someone 5y ago
  They say it’s from old phone books (https://www.surnamemap.eu/belgium/info.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/belgium/info.php. Seems to be the same for other countries)
  - elcapitan 5y ago
    Interesting, for Germany they don't quote any sources. My guess is that it's from the old D-Info CD-ROMS which used to be quite popular for a while. Obviously they wouldn't mention scraping that data.
tsujp 5y ago
Neat, my surname which is Coppard has only 430 occurrences (by this datasets authority) in the UK. It looks like if you query it directly on the map view here: https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php Then that shows you the "Places" count from the rankings list here: https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/most_common_surnames_ranking.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/most_common_surnames... Should be good for others who don't have a very common surname and didn't find it in the (maximum) 10 pages of results.
huhtenberg 5y ago
Not a single Dracula in Romania. Hmm.
- m12k 5y ago
  Try "Impaler, Vlad the"
- kibwen 5y ago
  Ah, but in Romanian his name was Vlad Țepeș, and while "Țepeș" has no hits, "Tepes" has several hundred.
  - itronitron 5y ago
    Szilagyi shows up ... Vlad's second wife was Jusztina Szilágyi, ... She survived Vlad Dracul, and married thirdly Pál Suki, then János Erdélyi. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler#Family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler#Family
k__ 5y ago
My surename only shows up 100 times and only in a small part of Germany. I don't even show up on that map at all.
meltedcapacitor 5y ago
Nice. Also the bloat-free implementation. Why can't all websites be like this?
- dspillett 5y ago
  > Also the bloat-free implementation. Only if you have a blocker that deals with the interstitial ads…
mazr 5y ago
Oh yeah ! Onomastics (the study of names) is very cool ! And a nice data point to add to personalized data. I did a project with that a while ago to study discrimination in France (https://namograph.antonomase.fr/ https://namograph.antonomase.fr/) and it worked pretty well as long as you have large samples and stick to distributions comparisons. Some nice use w.r.t. social mobility : https://www.amazon.fr/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Mobility-ebook/dp/B00HNF5Z96/ https://www.amazon.fr/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Mobility-ebook... A good API to work with : https://namsor.app/ https://namsor.app/
neonnoodle 5y ago
This map is ""fun"" if your family/ancestry was affected by the Holocaust. I am of German ancestry, with one branch being Catholic and another branch Jewish. The Catholic surname is still abundant right in the region of origin, the Jewish surname(s) are, well, let's just say they're not there.
- zepolen 5y ago
  Neither is Hitler.
  - UncleSlacky 5y ago
    You'd have to check Austria.
benlumen 5y ago
Maybe it's my surname, but it just looks like a population map.
- odiroot 5y ago
  My name is so rare, in my own country, I only get two small spots. And I don't live (or haven't lived) in any of them.
- kibwen 5y ago
  For common surnames, yes. Mine is quite rare, and while there are naturally a few hits in Berlin, most are concentrated in Southwest Germany, specifically Stuttgart. But you're right that it would be interesting to see the data normalized to population.
londons_explore 5y ago
I'd like to see this as a coloured heatmap, normalized to the proportion of people in an area with a given surname... Currently it's just highlighting big cities for any surname I could think of.
- busyant 5y ago
  I've come across this one for Italy: https://www.italianames.com/italian-last-names-maps https://www.italianames.com/italian-last-names-maps It has regional heat maps, but I prefer the one provided by surnamemap.eu It seems more granular and more comprehensive (my mother's maiden name is rare and it shows up on surnamemap.eu, but does not on the site that I linked to). I've actually used the surnamemap.eu site for maaaybe 10+ years. However, I don't know if it's updated, and if so, how frequently it's updated.
Bayart 5y ago
It seems accurate, albeit a bit outdated, for my extremelly rare familly name (I know most of the people who bear it, and we're still clustering around what I assume is our ancestral village), but the more common form of the same name is not in the database.
- funcDropShadow 5y ago
  I concur, my surname exists only twice in Germany. And this map shows the place where I live and where I used to live. The place where my mother lives is not on the map. I guess the map is rather detailed. I'd like to know where the data is from.
  - eridan2 5y ago
    The Italian site (which is the original project) says: Surname maps have been obtained by processing data from telephone directories in the 1990s
donatj 5y ago
I wish I could search the whole thing at once. My surname is pretty rare in general.
sublimefire 5y ago
I'd love to see this done to something like Lithuania where surname ending differs among men, wives, girls (e.g. Tulas, Tuliene, Tulaite). Also, how do the compound names get dissected (e.g. Mary Scott-Doe)?
emreb 5y ago
Seems like a scam to collect credit card information from browsers that are not safe enough. When I click on the name field I get a message saying "Automatic credit card filling is disabled because this form does not ..."
- RicoElectrico 5y ago
  I would not jump to such conclusions - browsers are sometimes too clever for their own good. Do you see any (visible or hidden) form input for card number, expiry date and CVV2?
dusted 5y ago
The most interactive thing about this seems to be the banner ads..
- nkozyra 5y ago
  I thought Google ads had a maximum spots per page, looks like there's at least 8 on some pages.
krylon 5y ago
It's kind of funny, my surname actually does have a huge cluster around my hometown, but my paternal grandfather I inherited that name from was from another part of Germany and only moved here in the 1940s. One time someone from the USA contacted me on Facebook because he has the same surname, to see if we were related. We weren't, but his great-grandparents were from my hometown and emigrated to the USA around 1900 or so (before WW I, anyway). Fun fact, in 1998, I did an internship at a local hi-fi shop and met a guy who actually had the exact same name as my father. But wait, there's more: He also was in the same line of work as my father. He did not look anything like my father, fortunately, that would have freaked my out in a big way.
- maxwell 5y ago
  Sounds like another (anecdotal) data point for nominative determinism: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180404-do-our-names-push-us-toward-certain-jobs https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180404-do-our-names-p...
  - krylon 5y ago
    Those are two people from a group of at least several hundred. I'm not sure that's strong evidence. I count it as one those weird coincidences that make life interesting. Of course, they might be a lot more insurance agents with my surname, but I wouldn't know one way or the other. Also, I like weird coincidences, so I'm rather biased. That doesn't mean you're wrong, though. I just don't have enough data to support your idea.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- k4shm0n3y 5y ago
  Reminds me of a scare I had when I was dating my now wife. We were discussing our families and turns out our mothers had the same first name... and their maiden surnames were the same. It's a fairly common Irish name and there was no traceable relation but talk about a potential freakout! Made for a great bit during my father-in-law's speech at our wedding.
runxel 5y ago
It works quite well, but bear in mind that the dataset must be already quite old. Based on my ancestors extremely rare name (only family in Germany) I would say at least 15 years old – but accurate for that matter!
- Normal_gaussian 5y ago
  It have some much more up to date info in the UK - it definitely has data from the last 5 years as I can see: * my last 3 houses * my sisters uni locations (quite distinctive due to the campus location) * my family home * my dads home (post-divorce) Our surname is uncommon and I know for a fact I'm the only one in my county, my dad in his, and my sister was the only one ever at her uni. Of course there could be others I don't know in these towns, but when we are talking <30 locations total and I know people at each of them and my immediate family accounts for nearly a third of locations...
- eridan2 5y ago
  The data sets are the phonebooks from the 1990s - see https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/info.php https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/info.php
vanderZwan 5y ago
I don't know which dataset you're using for the Netherlands, but it's way off: https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/index.php?sur=van+der+Zwan&s=Search https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/index.php?sur=van+der+... https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?gba_lcnaam=van%20der%20zwan&gba_naam=van%20der%20Zwan&nfd_naam=Zwan,%20van%20der&operator=eq&taal= https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?gba_lcnaa... EDIT: actually, it works if I use "vd Zwan", which is fine by itself, but that contradicts the instructions on top of the page: https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/nl/index.php?sur=vd+zwan&s=Zoeken https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/nl/index.php?sur=vd+zw...
- gpvos 5y ago
  Yes, the handling of prefixes is really bad.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  maybe your entire extended family went to the efteling when they sampled that data
deleted 5y ago
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locallost 5y ago
It would be interesting to see it on the EU level and for other countries (I understand finding the data is the hard part). There's been a lot of migration and millions of people live outside of their countries.
mbustamanter 5y ago
Pretty accurate, at least for the 15 or so surnames I searched. All branches of my family, except one, come from Spain. I rearched most of the surnames and was able to get information on many (Basque, Castillian, Cantabric) and those roots are still reflected on this map. By that I mean they are most dense where they originated (some even 700 years ago), indepedent if they're toponymic or not.
busyant 5y ago
Would be cool if this were merged into a single map of Europe with a single search. You could get a sense of your "surname diaspora."
asimpletune 5y ago
Wow, I have a very uncommon Italian surname, and I was super surprised to see the results. The majority of my relatives were concentrated in where I know them to be, with a few outliers in the north and south.
melenaboija 5y ago
It is sad that most, if not all, of the databases don’t take into account accents and other phonetic signs. My last name is completely different with and without and accent. Actually in my case different languages, without accent is a Spanish last name and with the accent is Catalan. That means that people like me have to keep record of our real names. Also curious that databases have been one step backwards, in Spain Catholic churches kept record of all the babies born in their towns with correct spelling and that is lost now with modern technologies.
- fnordian_slip 5y ago
  That is indeed sad. I, on the other hand, was pleasantly surprised that the site makes a distinction between "ß" and "ss". This usually presents a problem online, and I've sometimes considered changing my last name because of that. I had never thought about the fact that this must be even harder for French and Spanish speakers, with the high amount of accents compared to Umlauts and the "sharp s" in German.
- eb0la 5y ago
  They still keep that records. During the spanish civil war they had better data than the goverment.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Tons of surnames were truncated or spelled phonetically over the years because not everyone wants to hand hold an immigration official through the proper spelling of a name that they can't pronounce and may have characters that aren't in the alphabet they're using. Even if you don't say "screw it, good enough" after the first few syllables you can lose resolution because there can be multiple character combos that generate the same sound in the source language but there may be fewer used for that in the destination language.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  > ... in Spain Catholic churches kept record of all the babies born in their towns with correct spelling and that is lost now with modern technologies. I found this to be the opposite. My church record contains a hispanicized version of my name, whereas the government has the proper one. Reason given was that the church wouldn't admit certain regional spellings. Also, acute accents have been recorded in the census databases since forever, at least in Spain.
ulzeraj 5y ago
Where is this data coming from? I have a rare Italian surname and this finder puts a very small circle (1-5) on the very region my grand grand father departed to America in 1895.
liveoneggs 5y ago
this website is an ad-riddles mess
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Install uBlock.
wazoox 5y ago
Vaguely related amusing bit of trivia: the word for smith or blacksmith is one of the most common names about everywhere: Smith (England), Schmidt (Germany), Smit/Smet (Belgium, Netherlands), Fabre/Favre/Lefèvre/Lefèbvre (France), Ferrari/Fabri (Italy), Ferrero/Herrero (Spain), Ferreiro (Portugal), Kowalski (Poland), Haddad (Morocco), Demirci (Turkey), Demirdjian (Armenia), Gof/Goff/Le Goff (Brittany, Wales), Gowan/Gowen/Gow/Gough (Scotland), Kuznitz/Kuznetz/Kuznetzov (Russia), etc.
- emptyfile 5y ago
  Kovač(Kovacs, Kovac, Kovach) in Croatia.
  - plcguy 5y ago
    also Slovakia/Czech
  - rootbear 5y ago
    And Hungarian (Kovács)
- Zobat 5y ago
  But not in Sweden, there's 220 persons with "Smed" as surname here. We do have 15 men and 10 women with it as (any of) their given name(s).
- cinntaile 5y ago
  To add to this bit of trivia. In Sweden this was never a thing where your job became your surname. If you go to a cemetery you'll sometimes see the occupation on the gravestone though, especially on older graves and if it was a more higher class job.
  - mdeck_ 5y ago
    Admittedly it seems less common, but... there certainly are some Smeds in Sweden (and the rest of Scandinavia). The names are not ALL sons/sens and geographic features... https://forebears.io/surnames/smed https://forebears.io/surnames/smed
pixelbreaker 5y ago
https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=hitler&s=Search https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=hitler...
- rory 5y ago
  Seems like a good local news fluff piece. "The last Hitler in England"
  - pixelbreaker 5y ago
    There aren't any in Germany...
    - UncleSlacky 5y ago
      You'd have to check Austria, surely?
  - pixelbreaker 5y ago
    "He is literally Hitler"
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Suspect it's someone trolling a census. There's also a Skywalker in London, which is probably more likely to be someone that took the campaign to get Jedi recognised as a religion in the UK way too far than the last vestiges of the Skywalker dynasty
    - UncleSlacky 5y ago
      Probably a neonazi who changed their name.
unfocused 5y ago
Very neat. My ancestors are not European, they are Lebanese, but I was able to find their last name in the countries they emigrated to long ago in Europe, and the cities make sense, although there's more than I thought in certain countries! For those interested, depending on where you live, you can access Ancestry.com through the Public Library for free. In Ottawa, that was case, although as of Jan. 1, 2022, you have to go in person. Through there, you can search by name or even place of origin, and you can see the immigration records. May of which even have the photos! I noted some people that went to Brazil and could see the entire person and his family. I'm sure many people don't know that. I was able to see my Grandfather's record to Canada in 1925 New Brunswick, and my Great Uncle's record in 1911 to Omaha, Nebraska. I'm also told my Great Grandfather came to the US in 1901, but I have been unable to track his record, because after having manually reviewed 1000+ records, I can tell you with confidence that spelling errors are rampant. You had names change from say Smith, to Sally, and you can see the scratches as the records were modified. It's hilarious! Also, they even misspell the names in the same record. So searching is very, very hard, and instead you have to put in a broad search, like city (which can also be misspelled), and then manually look through the records. The only thing that I can say that is pretty accurate is the year. So that should be your starting point. Good luck!
- james-redwood 5y ago
  I’m curious to hear about the migration story? We’re there many Lebanese immigrants in Europe in the 1800s?
  - unfocused 5y ago
    Hi, I don't have any numbers, but I wouldn't say there was a lot, because European cities were pretty established, so hard to start a new life there. But I do know that people from my Mom's village were doing trades with Europeans, and my Great Great Grandmother, was called Marianna and my Great Aunt was called Juliette. They also could speak French in the early 1900s, well before WW1 or WW2. Many people think that French was introduced after WW2 during the French Mandate, but Lebanese have been travelling overseas for a long time, and had ties to many countries. I think I read somewhere that even going back to 1600s they had ties to France. On the other hand, there are also ties to Greece from the Orthodox side that date back > 1500 years. But getting back to Europe, I would say mass migration were popular to South America, especially Brazil (from my Dad's village, many people went there, in addition to the US, and North America. I even met a Lebanese friend from Curaçao, and when I was at his house, they didn't speak Lebanese, they spoke Papiamento! Basically, they adapt and learn whatever language is needed. Remember, Lebanon was once a Roman Province (although Latin wasn't spoke everywhere), and before Greek language was prevalent, and before that, Syriac (western aramaic). In the year 600, Arabic started moving in. So having to learn new languages is not new in our history. So far, what I've done is take my Dad's stories, and try to link them to actual records, and so far he's been right! He loves history, and my mom is a walking encyclopedia of family names. They know the villages the names come from. Oh, I even found graves listed in the US from early 1800s with the name Khouri, and it was of a soldier. I suck at US history, so whatever war was back then, there was a Lebanese person there.
rory 5y ago
My name is common enough that it's basically this: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
davidw 5y ago
Searching for "Smith" in Italy turns up NATO base areas along with larger cities. It's really interesting to see how regional some names are.
ChildOfEru 5y ago
Very fun; my grandfather came from the Isle of Jersey. The surname clusters around the Normandy area which makes sense.
jonenst 5y ago
This website is overloaded with adds. It almost feels like a scam. Based on the fact that almost all other comments are not talking about it, I guess at least one of the following hypotheses is true (if not all of them): - most people here use an efficient addblocker - The website changed since its first appearance on the first page (maximize revenue?) - some comments are sponsored - on mobile it feels overwhelming but on desktops it's more bearable
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I haven't seen any ad. Thanks adblockers!
- rootbear 5y ago
  I gave up as soon as I realized that the form at the top was an ad and not part of the page. What a mess!
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  Brave browser ftw
- toyg 5y ago
  > - most people here use an efficient addblocker Yup. I was like, "this is a very oldschool site, super-essential, bare styling..." I guess all that whitespace is covered in ads for you, lol.
  - wsinks 5y ago
    ha! I don't use an adblocker, and when I first loaded this page, it looked great! and then I quickly quit out and came to the comments instead of using it. And then I saw this, and went back... Oh. I just wasn't on the page long enough to see just how many ads were loaded, wow!!
    - BuildTheRobots 5y ago
      You make not using an adblocker seem like an active choice - can I ask why?
manuelabeledo 5y ago
Nice. A bit out of date, though. I can find myself in there (I have a quite uncommon surname), but I haven't been to my home country in half a decade.
lakkal 5y ago
Neat. I just recently found an old letter pertaining to my great-great-grandfather selling a house in Germany prior to coming to the US in the 1880s or so. The town mentioned is the site of a cluster of his (uncommon) surname.
uberman 5y ago
seems like just a ad trap to me
Aidevah 5y ago
This seems to have answered a longstanding question I had about French surnames. I had come across a presentation given by a person bearing the name "La Rochefoucauld" and I always wondered if she was descended from the eponymous noble family or related to the famous writer. This website tells me that in France the name "La Rochefoucauld" is uncommon but not rare so I guess the answer to that question is "maybe". I also searched for "Monteverdi" out of curiosity and the largest cluster bearing that name are in Lombardy centred around Cremona, which was indeed where the famous composer was born four and a half centuries ago.
- Bayart 5y ago
  It's one of the most ancient and illustrious noble families in France. There's virtually no chance somebody would bear than name without an actual relationship to the familly. They'd risk litigation, for one.
  - rodelrod 5y ago
    Unless their ancestors emigrated to the Americas in which case it's a free for all.
pelasaco 5y ago
Portugal isn't Europe?
- pedro2 5y ago
  It's not on the mainpage, but it is there: http://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/ http://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/
Zobat 5y ago
Anyone else found a surname with just 1 "place"? Started looking av UK and tried a few I could think of. I'm from Sweden so I went for the obvious ones like Smith, Black, White and then just for laughs continued with colors (oops, that was UK so colours, i suppose). Went with Red, Blue and so on, was surprised by how many Pinks there were but then hit "gold" (1861 places) with Magenta, one place!
- nimajneb 5y ago
  My wifes maiden name is unique, several generations ago (early 1900s or so) her ancestors took their German surname and added a French La to the beginning. Won't show up on any of these maps becuase they we are in the US.
  - sjmm1989 5y ago
    Simple fix is simple then? Remove the La and just use the original surname. I've had to do something similar of sorts in tracking my family tree in the past. Long story short is this: Last names change, but bloodlines don't.
- sjmm1989 5y ago
  Poland for me. 1 result, almost smack dab in the middle. Romania has none. The rest all seem to have some in them. Some more than others. UK though. lol... map turn red. Edit: I'm in Canada for context.
- SamBam 5y ago
  A SurnameMapWhack. I found mine own, by having a relatively-uncommon US last name, and then being born in a European country where no one else has that name.
- baud147258 5y ago
  My mother's maiden appear in one place, which is the correct location for her, even if there's still a few living relatives elsewhere in France with the same name.
nimajneb 5y ago
I thought my last name was a variation of an English last name. But apparently there's ~15000 hits on the map for my last name and only ~1000 for the name I thought was original spelling. I think this is to blame with a very famous musician having the other spelling.
sjmm1989 5y ago
Lol. If I put my last name into UK's map, the map basically turns red.
eddyfromtheblok 5y ago
wow, I found an enclave of my surname on a Catalan island! and in the south of the Netherlands, and over the border in Germany, which I expected. also, I'm not seeing any ads using the Vivaldi browser.
spacemachine 5y ago
Pretty uninspiring results for my surname. Basically just looks like a population map. My surname isn't especially common, but it is quite popular as a first name. So, there might be a high chance chance that a lot of displayed matches are false positives due to first names misinterpreted as surnames.
Scarblac 5y ago
I doubt the accuracy -- my family and I don't show up for the municipality I live in in the Netherlands.
zfxfr 5y ago
If you want to fill the map of France with red color then search for MARTIN.
MarcScott 5y ago
For the names I looked up in the UK, this might as well have been a map of population centres. Almost every surname was focused in London, Birmingham and Manchester. It's to be expected, I suppose, but not very informative.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Yep, relevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1138/ https://m.xkcd.com/1138/ Without a per-capita adjustment, this is near-meaningless.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Depends what you're trying to extract from the data. For my rare surname, it's tiny circles corresponding to individual households, most of the UKs largest cities have no instances but there is a cluster of small circles in the towns near where my dad grew up. That's more interesting visually than the frequency being <1 per 100k population basically everywhere.
- folkrav 5y ago
  First thing I did was typing up my French originating surname; big agglomerate right around Paris, then Normandy (where my ancestors came from).
ohples 5y ago
Doesn't seem to like diacritics (ie accents) Tried my name in France with/without the accent. Seems weird for a site related to Europe.
utopcell 5y ago
This site is misleading, tricking you into entering your name on an ad. Also one of the individual country's input fields triggers Chrome's CC popup.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  This is the impression that I got. I don't see any means of seeing names without actually entering anything. If the site was intended to be used for educational purposes, it would at least show a list of common names by default.
lvxferre 5y ago
I've looked both of my surnames, as they're fairly regional in Europe. Seems accurate.
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
What I find rather depressing about these kinds of things is that they will be utterly useless to learn anything from going forward in just a few more generations, after the atrocity of forced integration and so called "diversity" will permanently and irrevocably muddle and pollute all cultures and people and societies all throughout the world. We will soon no longer need to fight over ethnicity and race, because we will all be the same muddled and meaningless mass where the Ministry of Truth tells us that today the Italians are equally Indians, as Nigerians are Swedes. The process is already quite advanced in the USA, where unique cultures, dialects, histories, cuisine, traditions, etc. that existed until rather recently, have been utterly shattered and deracinated and polluted through homogenization and corporatization of society, not to mention both sent into the memory hole and been rewritten a few times by now. To see an even more extreme example of what the outcome of all this "globalization" and fraudulent "diversity" will be is to look to the ancestors of blacks in America that have suffering from the effects of being captured in war in Africa, sold into slavery, mixed together and torn apart socially, and shipped across an ocean where they were then traded and mixed and muddled wantonly just like "diversity" intends to do. They suffer from an acute absence and intentional destruction of what little culture and society they had. That is what the oligarchs of today have in store for all of us regular folks just like the oligarch plantation owners of the past perpetrated on humanity. And don't make the mistake if you think "white people" deserve the atrocity of "diversity" that has targeted them up to this point, it will invariably come for you and your culture and your society too, only there will be no one left and no moral argument to defend your culture then.
- vermooten 5y ago
  zzzzzzz
- boredumb 5y ago
  You are expressing a forbidden truth quite well. The marketing power behind this agenda does an incredible job of scrubbing away any of the ill effects of globalization paired with an obvious effort to discredit and obfuscate any coherent arguments against it.
- vehemenz 5y ago
theomega 5y ago
Related XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ As the numbers are absolute, these maps are basically influenced by population densities.
IanDrake 5y ago
6510 5y ago
what great data mining tool, I watch my hands type every surname I know in order of familiarity. lol
aosmith 5y ago
What a dumpster fire of ads, how is this on the front page?
dhosek 5y ago
The ad at the top looks too much like part of the site.
jollybean 5y ago
It ends up just being a population density map unfortunately. Names are concentrated in cities, well we knew that. Would be nice to somehow normalise a bit for pop. density.
coward123 5y ago
Here's what I thought was really great about this: My family originated in a European country not included in the list. In the 1600s (maybe even late 1500s) we took refuge in one of these countries that allowed a degree of religious tolerance in a specific area. Over the next century, many picked up and came to the new world. Anyway, point being it was really neat to see my family name still in that very specific area, despite it being a name that would automatically stand out even today as "not from around here."
JaceLightning 5y ago
Scam? I tapped the input field and all of my credit cards came up as options.
Hublium 5y ago
For Austria: https://namenskarten.lima-city.at/de/ https://namenskarten.lima-city.at/de/

288 points by Nitrolo 5y ago

goombacloud 5y ago

Data is not clean, I doubt people have the surname "Computer" or "Bahnhof" (train station) in Germany

theomega 5y ago
Also search for City names which yields very suspicious results: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Hamburg&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Hamburg&s=Sear... https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Berlin&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=Berlin&s=Searc... https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=M%FCnchen&s=Search https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=M%FCnchen&s=Se... I don't think there are that many people called like cities and also they don't all live in those cities.
- advanced-DnD 5y ago
  Data set is broken... he just want to earn some HN traffic and ads money

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

marcodiego 5y ago

For some reason it is lacking Portugal: https://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/ https://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/

cataphract 5y ago
Portugal is such an homogeneous country that this is basically a map of population density x national frequency of the surname. Only exception I found is Viegas, which has a higher than expected concentration in Algarve.
eridan2 5y ago
Spanish site has a link to the Portuguese one - https://www.mapadeapellidos.eu/en/ https://www.mapadeapellidos.eu/en/ - list of countries under the map

brnt 5y ago

Where does it obtain data in countries without registries (such as France)?

baud147258 5y ago
doesn't France conduct census? I'm pretty sure I had to get registered when I reached the majority age. And, according to other comments, the website used phone books (which existed in France)
- brnt 5y ago
  When I moved there, I didn't have to, or could, notify anyone I was living there.

tompagenet2 5y ago

Is this normalised at all? It always seems to look like a map of where cities are, although there are some interesting trends, especially if you pick surnames that have more recently become prevalent in a country.

pwg 5y ago
https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
aasasd 5y ago
Presumably not normalized—but I still can see the trends, e.g. of top two surnames in Ireland, one is more popular in south and the other in north.
archi42 5y ago
Doesn't seem like it is, and the sibling xkcd is spot on. For rare surnames it's still possible to see trends, especially if you know the high-density areas. I tried some random surnames for Germany, and while Klein ("Small") is pretty popular, the Latin variant Minor has some obvious hotspot: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=minor https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/index.php?sur=minor Also, TIL: "Ficken" (=to f...k) seems to be a (rare) surname in the northern parts of Lower Saxony.
asveikau 5y ago
Might vary a lot based on the country and the name chosen. Eg. Italy has only been a single state since the 1860s, and regional languages can surface a lot of differences. I entered my mom's southern Italian maiden name and got pretty high correlation to places where her dad's family had ties...
nickysielicki 5y ago
My surname is Polish, sort of, and it’s typically more associated with what was historically northeast Poland/Vilnius. If you search my surname (Sielicki) you can see how there was a resettlement between the lands lost on the east and gained in the west after WWII.

karlerss 5y ago

Basically just population maps - https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/

DaedPsyker 5y ago
In my case not, I have a pretty rare last name. The map does show it's heavily regional with just a few scatterings elsewhere.
kuboble 5y ago
Not at all. For example here is a picture comparing mine and my wife's surnames. https://i.gyazo.com/f67aae30e098a5f9d1e13fdf58f638e4.png https://i.gyazo.com/f67aae30e098a5f9d1e13fdf58f638e4.png
wink 5y ago
For (very) common names, yes. Checked mine and a few other rare ones on the German map and it 100% matches the few people I know of, or the region where they hail from.
gpvos 5y ago
Even for very common Dutch surnames like Jansen, Smit and De Vries you see interesting differences.
- Someone 5y ago
  For the Netherlands, https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/index.php?taal=eng/ https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/index.php?taal=eng/ is a better source. It has an (IMO) better visualization and can compensate for population density. Invalshoek expect it to have better data. (And for first names, there’s https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english)
  - gpvos 5y ago
    Ah yes, I wanted to link to the Meertens Familienamenbank too, which apparently has been taken over by the CBG several years ago.

elaus 5y ago

Very interesting, especially for less popular or more regional names. Would love to know more about how it's done: What is the source of those mapping between names and geo locations? Public phone books to get the address and then some reverse geo-coding?

gitowiec 5y ago
Exactly! How come it knows where I live?
- tsujp 5y ago
  Census data would be one way, e.g. (one of many) for the UK. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/census-records/#5-people-in-the-census https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mazr 5y ago
Here's some of the sources I've seen when working on that topic [1] : Census data, Phone books, Academic bibliographic databases (web of science, pubmed), list of athletes at olympic games, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, ... [1] https://antonomase.fr/fi/mazieres_bms_names.pdf https://antonomase.fr/fi/mazieres_bms_names.pdf you'll find the references to some of these examples.

wiz21c 5y ago

How did they geolocate the surnames ? Mine is pretty unique in my country and it's located in the town where I live. Where did they got this information from ?

Someone 5y ago
They say it’s from old phone books (https://www.surnamemap.eu/belgium/info.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/belgium/info.php. Seems to be the same for other countries)
- elcapitan 5y ago
  Interesting, for Germany they don't quote any sources. My guess is that it's from the old D-Info CD-ROMS which used to be quite popular for a while. Obviously they wouldn't mention scraping that data.

tsujp 5y ago

Neat, my surname which is Coppard has only 430 occurrences (by this datasets authority) in the UK. It looks like if you query it directly on the map view here: https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php Then that shows you the "Places" count from the rankings list here: https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/most_common_surnames_ranking.php https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/most_common_surnames... Should be good for others who don't have a very common surname and didn't find it in the (maximum) 10 pages of results.

huhtenberg 5y ago

Not a single Dracula in Romania. Hmm.

m12k 5y ago
Try "Impaler, Vlad the"
kibwen 5y ago
Ah, but in Romanian his name was Vlad Țepeș, and while "Țepeș" has no hits, "Tepes" has several hundred.
- itronitron 5y ago
  Szilagyi shows up ... Vlad's second wife was Jusztina Szilágyi, ... She survived Vlad Dracul, and married thirdly Pál Suki, then János Erdélyi. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler#Family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler#Family

k__ 5y ago

My surename only shows up 100 times and only in a small part of Germany. I don't even show up on that map at all.

meltedcapacitor 5y ago

Nice. Also the bloat-free implementation. Why can't all websites be like this?

dspillett 5y ago
> Also the bloat-free implementation. Only if you have a blocker that deals with the interstitial ads…

mazr 5y ago

Oh yeah ! Onomastics (the study of names) is very cool ! And a nice data point to add to personalized data. I did a project with that a while ago to study discrimination in France (https://namograph.antonomase.fr/ https://namograph.antonomase.fr/) and it worked pretty well as long as you have large samples and stick to distributions comparisons. Some nice use w.r.t. social mobility : https://www.amazon.fr/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Mobility-ebook/dp/B00HNF5Z96/ https://www.amazon.fr/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Mobility-ebook... A good API to work with : https://namsor.app/ https://namsor.app/

neonnoodle 5y ago

This map is ""fun"" if your family/ancestry was affected by the Holocaust. I am of German ancestry, with one branch being Catholic and another branch Jewish. The Catholic surname is still abundant right in the region of origin, the Jewish surname(s) are, well, let's just say they're not there.

zepolen 5y ago
Neither is Hitler.
- UncleSlacky 5y ago
  You'd have to check Austria.

benlumen 5y ago

Maybe it's my surname, but it just looks like a population map.

odiroot 5y ago
My name is so rare, in my own country, I only get two small spots. And I don't live (or haven't lived) in any of them.
kibwen 5y ago
For common surnames, yes. Mine is quite rare, and while there are naturally a few hits in Berlin, most are concentrated in Southwest Germany, specifically Stuttgart. But you're right that it would be interesting to see the data normalized to population.

londons_explore 5y ago

I'd like to see this as a coloured heatmap, normalized to the proportion of people in an area with a given surname... Currently it's just highlighting big cities for any surname I could think of.

busyant 5y ago
I've come across this one for Italy: https://www.italianames.com/italian-last-names-maps https://www.italianames.com/italian-last-names-maps It has regional heat maps, but I prefer the one provided by surnamemap.eu It seems more granular and more comprehensive (my mother's maiden name is rare and it shows up on surnamemap.eu, but does not on the site that I linked to). I've actually used the surnamemap.eu site for maaaybe 10+ years. However, I don't know if it's updated, and if so, how frequently it's updated.

Bayart 5y ago

It seems accurate, albeit a bit outdated, for my extremelly rare familly name (I know most of the people who bear it, and we're still clustering around what I assume is our ancestral village), but the more common form of the same name is not in the database.

funcDropShadow 5y ago
I concur, my surname exists only twice in Germany. And this map shows the place where I live and where I used to live. The place where my mother lives is not on the map. I guess the map is rather detailed. I'd like to know where the data is from.
- eridan2 5y ago
  The Italian site (which is the original project) says: Surname maps have been obtained by processing data from telephone directories in the 1990s

donatj 5y ago

I wish I could search the whole thing at once. My surname is pretty rare in general.

sublimefire 5y ago

I'd love to see this done to something like Lithuania where surname ending differs among men, wives, girls (e.g. Tulas, Tuliene, Tulaite). Also, how do the compound names get dissected (e.g. Mary Scott-Doe)?

emreb 5y ago

Seems like a scam to collect credit card information from browsers that are not safe enough. When I click on the name field I get a message saying "Automatic credit card filling is disabled because this form does not ..."

RicoElectrico 5y ago
I would not jump to such conclusions - browsers are sometimes too clever for their own good. Do you see any (visible or hidden) form input for card number, expiry date and CVV2?

dusted 5y ago

The most interactive thing about this seems to be the banner ads..

nkozyra 5y ago
I thought Google ads had a maximum spots per page, looks like there's at least 8 on some pages.

krylon 5y ago

It's kind of funny, my surname actually does have a huge cluster around my hometown, but my paternal grandfather I inherited that name from was from another part of Germany and only moved here in the 1940s. One time someone from the USA contacted me on Facebook because he has the same surname, to see if we were related. We weren't, but his great-grandparents were from my hometown and emigrated to the USA around 1900 or so (before WW I, anyway). Fun fact, in 1998, I did an internship at a local hi-fi shop and met a guy who actually had the exact same name as my father. But wait, there's more: He also was in the same line of work as my father. He did not look anything like my father, fortunately, that would have freaked my out in a big way.

maxwell 5y ago
Sounds like another (anecdotal) data point for nominative determinism: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180404-do-our-names-push-us-toward-certain-jobs https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180404-do-our-names-p...
- krylon 5y ago
  Those are two people from a group of at least several hundred. I'm not sure that's strong evidence. I count it as one those weird coincidences that make life interesting. Of course, they might be a lot more insurance agents with my surname, but I wouldn't know one way or the other. Also, I like weird coincidences, so I'm rather biased. That doesn't mean you're wrong, though. I just don't have enough data to support your idea.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
k4shm0n3y 5y ago
Reminds me of a scare I had when I was dating my now wife. We were discussing our families and turns out our mothers had the same first name... and their maiden surnames were the same. It's a fairly common Irish name and there was no traceable relation but talk about a potential freakout! Made for a great bit during my father-in-law's speech at our wedding.

runxel 5y ago

It works quite well, but bear in mind that the dataset must be already quite old. Based on my ancestors extremely rare name (only family in Germany) I would say at least 15 years old – but accurate for that matter!

Normal_gaussian 5y ago
It have some much more up to date info in the UK - it definitely has data from the last 5 years as I can see: * my last 3 houses * my sisters uni locations (quite distinctive due to the campus location) * my family home * my dads home (post-divorce) Our surname is uncommon and I know for a fact I'm the only one in my county, my dad in his, and my sister was the only one ever at her uni. Of course there could be others I don't know in these towns, but when we are talking <30 locations total and I know people at each of them and my immediate family accounts for nearly a third of locations...
eridan2 5y ago
The data sets are the phonebooks from the 1990s - see https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/info.php https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/info.php

vanderZwan 5y ago

I don't know which dataset you're using for the Netherlands, but it's way off: https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/index.php?sur=van+der+Zwan&s=Search https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/index.php?sur=van+der+... https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?gba_lcnaam=van%20der%20zwan&gba_naam=van%20der%20Zwan&nfd_naam=Zwan,%20van%20der&operator=eq&taal= https://www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?gba_lcnaa... EDIT: actually, it works if I use "vd Zwan", which is fine by itself, but that contradicts the instructions on top of the page: https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/nl/index.php?sur=vd+zwan&s=Zoeken https://www.surnamemap.eu/netherlands/nl/index.php?sur=vd+zw...

gpvos 5y ago
Yes, the handling of prefixes is really bad.
skrebbel 5y ago
maybe your entire extended family went to the efteling when they sampled that data

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

locallost 5y ago

It would be interesting to see it on the EU level and for other countries (I understand finding the data is the hard part). There's been a lot of migration and millions of people live outside of their countries.

mbustamanter 5y ago

Pretty accurate, at least for the 15 or so surnames I searched. All branches of my family, except one, come from Spain. I rearched most of the surnames and was able to get information on many (Basque, Castillian, Cantabric) and those roots are still reflected on this map. By that I mean they are most dense where they originated (some even 700 years ago), indepedent if they're toponymic or not.

busyant 5y ago

Would be cool if this were merged into a single map of Europe with a single search. You could get a sense of your "surname diaspora."

asimpletune 5y ago

Wow, I have a very uncommon Italian surname, and I was super surprised to see the results. The majority of my relatives were concentrated in where I know them to be, with a few outliers in the north and south.

melenaboija 5y ago

It is sad that most, if not all, of the databases don’t take into account accents and other phonetic signs. My last name is completely different with and without and accent. Actually in my case different languages, without accent is a Spanish last name and with the accent is Catalan. That means that people like me have to keep record of our real names. Also curious that databases have been one step backwards, in Spain Catholic churches kept record of all the babies born in their towns with correct spelling and that is lost now with modern technologies.

fnordian_slip 5y ago
That is indeed sad. I, on the other hand, was pleasantly surprised that the site makes a distinction between "ß" and "ss". This usually presents a problem online, and I've sometimes considered changing my last name because of that. I had never thought about the fact that this must be even harder for French and Spanish speakers, with the high amount of accents compared to Umlauts and the "sharp s" in German.
eb0la 5y ago
They still keep that records. During the spanish civil war they had better data than the goverment.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Tons of surnames were truncated or spelled phonetically over the years because not everyone wants to hand hold an immigration official through the proper spelling of a name that they can't pronounce and may have characters that aren't in the alphabet they're using. Even if you don't say "screw it, good enough" after the first few syllables you can lose resolution because there can be multiple character combos that generate the same sound in the source language but there may be fewer used for that in the destination language.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
> ... in Spain Catholic churches kept record of all the babies born in their towns with correct spelling and that is lost now with modern technologies. I found this to be the opposite. My church record contains a hispanicized version of my name, whereas the government has the proper one. Reason given was that the church wouldn't admit certain regional spellings. Also, acute accents have been recorded in the census databases since forever, at least in Spain.

ulzeraj 5y ago

Where is this data coming from? I have a rare Italian surname and this finder puts a very small circle (1-5) on the very region my grand grand father departed to America in 1895.

liveoneggs 5y ago

this website is an ad-riddles mess

kwhitefoot 5y ago
Install uBlock.

wazoox 5y ago

Vaguely related amusing bit of trivia: the word for smith or blacksmith is one of the most common names about everywhere: Smith (England), Schmidt (Germany), Smit/Smet (Belgium, Netherlands), Fabre/Favre/Lefèvre/Lefèbvre (France), Ferrari/Fabri (Italy), Ferrero/Herrero (Spain), Ferreiro (Portugal), Kowalski (Poland), Haddad (Morocco), Demirci (Turkey), Demirdjian (Armenia), Gof/Goff/Le Goff (Brittany, Wales), Gowan/Gowen/Gow/Gough (Scotland), Kuznitz/Kuznetz/Kuznetzov (Russia), etc.

emptyfile 5y ago
Kovač(Kovacs, Kovac, Kovach) in Croatia.
- plcguy 5y ago
  also Slovakia/Czech
- rootbear 5y ago
  And Hungarian (Kovács)
Zobat 5y ago
But not in Sweden, there's 220 persons with "Smed" as surname here. We do have 15 men and 10 women with it as (any of) their given name(s).
cinntaile 5y ago
To add to this bit of trivia. In Sweden this was never a thing where your job became your surname. If you go to a cemetery you'll sometimes see the occupation on the gravestone though, especially on older graves and if it was a more higher class job.
- mdeck_ 5y ago
  Admittedly it seems less common, but... there certainly are some Smeds in Sweden (and the rest of Scandinavia). The names are not ALL sons/sens and geographic features... https://forebears.io/surnames/smed https://forebears.io/surnames/smed

pixelbreaker 5y ago

https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=hitler&s=Search https://www.surnamemap.eu/unitedkingdom/index.php?sur=hitler...

rory 5y ago
Seems like a good local news fluff piece. "The last Hitler in England"
- pixelbreaker 5y ago
  There aren't any in Germany...
  - UncleSlacky 5y ago
    You'd have to check Austria, surely?
- pixelbreaker 5y ago
  "He is literally Hitler"
- notahacker 5y ago
  Suspect it's someone trolling a census. There's also a Skywalker in London, which is probably more likely to be someone that took the campaign to get Jedi recognised as a religion in the UK way too far than the last vestiges of the Skywalker dynasty
  - UncleSlacky 5y ago
    Probably a neonazi who changed their name.

unfocused 5y ago

Very neat. My ancestors are not European, they are Lebanese, but I was able to find their last name in the countries they emigrated to long ago in Europe, and the cities make sense, although there's more than I thought in certain countries! For those interested, depending on where you live, you can access Ancestry.com through the Public Library for free. In Ottawa, that was case, although as of Jan. 1, 2022, you have to go in person. Through there, you can search by name or even place of origin, and you can see the immigration records. May of which even have the photos! I noted some people that went to Brazil and could see the entire person and his family. I'm sure many people don't know that. I was able to see my Grandfather's record to Canada in 1925 New Brunswick, and my Great Uncle's record in 1911 to Omaha, Nebraska. I'm also told my Great Grandfather came to the US in 1901, but I have been unable to track his record, because after having manually reviewed 1000+ records, I can tell you with confidence that spelling errors are rampant. You had names change from say Smith, to Sally, and you can see the scratches as the records were modified. It's hilarious! Also, they even misspell the names in the same record. So searching is very, very hard, and instead you have to put in a broad search, like city (which can also be misspelled), and then manually look through the records. The only thing that I can say that is pretty accurate is the year. So that should be your starting point. Good luck!

james-redwood 5y ago
I’m curious to hear about the migration story? We’re there many Lebanese immigrants in Europe in the 1800s?
- unfocused 5y ago
  Hi, I don't have any numbers, but I wouldn't say there was a lot, because European cities were pretty established, so hard to start a new life there. But I do know that people from my Mom's village were doing trades with Europeans, and my Great Great Grandmother, was called Marianna and my Great Aunt was called Juliette. They also could speak French in the early 1900s, well before WW1 or WW2. Many people think that French was introduced after WW2 during the French Mandate, but Lebanese have been travelling overseas for a long time, and had ties to many countries. I think I read somewhere that even going back to 1600s they had ties to France. On the other hand, there are also ties to Greece from the Orthodox side that date back > 1500 years. But getting back to Europe, I would say mass migration were popular to South America, especially Brazil (from my Dad's village, many people went there, in addition to the US, and North America. I even met a Lebanese friend from Curaçao, and when I was at his house, they didn't speak Lebanese, they spoke Papiamento! Basically, they adapt and learn whatever language is needed. Remember, Lebanon was once a Roman Province (although Latin wasn't spoke everywhere), and before Greek language was prevalent, and before that, Syriac (western aramaic). In the year 600, Arabic started moving in. So having to learn new languages is not new in our history. So far, what I've done is take my Dad's stories, and try to link them to actual records, and so far he's been right! He loves history, and my mom is a walking encyclopedia of family names. They know the villages the names come from. Oh, I even found graves listed in the US from early 1800s with the name Khouri, and it was of a soldier. I suck at US history, so whatever war was back then, there was a Lebanese person there.

rory 5y ago

My name is common enough that it's basically this: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/

davidw 5y ago

Searching for "Smith" in Italy turns up NATO base areas along with larger cities. It's really interesting to see how regional some names are.

ChildOfEru 5y ago

Very fun; my grandfather came from the Isle of Jersey. The surname clusters around the Normandy area which makes sense.

jonenst 5y ago

This website is overloaded with adds. It almost feels like a scam. Based on the fact that almost all other comments are not talking about it, I guess at least one of the following hypotheses is true (if not all of them): - most people here use an efficient addblocker - The website changed since its first appearance on the first page (maximize revenue?) - some comments are sponsored - on mobile it feels overwhelming but on desktops it's more bearable

marcodiego 5y ago
I haven't seen any ad. Thanks adblockers!
rootbear 5y ago
I gave up as soon as I realized that the form at the top was an ad and not part of the page. What a mess!
jason-phillips 5y ago
Brave browser ftw
toyg 5y ago
> - most people here use an efficient addblocker Yup. I was like, "this is a very oldschool site, super-essential, bare styling..." I guess all that whitespace is covered in ads for you, lol.
- wsinks 5y ago
  ha! I don't use an adblocker, and when I first loaded this page, it looked great! and then I quickly quit out and came to the comments instead of using it. And then I saw this, and went back... Oh. I just wasn't on the page long enough to see just how many ads were loaded, wow!!
  - BuildTheRobots 5y ago
    You make not using an adblocker seem like an active choice - can I ask why?

manuelabeledo 5y ago

Nice. A bit out of date, though. I can find myself in there (I have a quite uncommon surname), but I haven't been to my home country in half a decade.

lakkal 5y ago

Neat. I just recently found an old letter pertaining to my great-great-grandfather selling a house in Germany prior to coming to the US in the 1880s or so. The town mentioned is the site of a cluster of his (uncommon) surname.

uberman 5y ago

seems like just a ad trap to me

Aidevah 5y ago

This seems to have answered a longstanding question I had about French surnames. I had come across a presentation given by a person bearing the name "La Rochefoucauld" and I always wondered if she was descended from the eponymous noble family or related to the famous writer. This website tells me that in France the name "La Rochefoucauld" is uncommon but not rare so I guess the answer to that question is "maybe". I also searched for "Monteverdi" out of curiosity and the largest cluster bearing that name are in Lombardy centred around Cremona, which was indeed where the famous composer was born four and a half centuries ago.

Bayart 5y ago
It's one of the most ancient and illustrious noble families in France. There's virtually no chance somebody would bear than name without an actual relationship to the familly. They'd risk litigation, for one.
- rodelrod 5y ago
  Unless their ancestors emigrated to the Americas in which case it's a free for all.

pelasaco 5y ago

Portugal isn't Europe?

pedro2 5y ago
It's not on the mainpage, but it is there: http://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/ http://www.mapadesobrenomes.com/en/

Zobat 5y ago

Anyone else found a surname with just 1 "place"? Started looking av UK and tried a few I could think of. I'm from Sweden so I went for the obvious ones like Smith, Black, White and then just for laughs continued with colors (oops, that was UK so colours, i suppose). Went with Red, Blue and so on, was surprised by how many Pinks there were but then hit "gold" (1861 places) with Magenta, one place!

nimajneb 5y ago
My wifes maiden name is unique, several generations ago (early 1900s or so) her ancestors took their German surname and added a French La to the beginning. Won't show up on any of these maps becuase they we are in the US.
- sjmm1989 5y ago
  Simple fix is simple then? Remove the La and just use the original surname. I've had to do something similar of sorts in tracking my family tree in the past. Long story short is this: Last names change, but bloodlines don't.
sjmm1989 5y ago
Poland for me. 1 result, almost smack dab in the middle. Romania has none. The rest all seem to have some in them. Some more than others. UK though. lol... map turn red. Edit: I'm in Canada for context.
SamBam 5y ago
A SurnameMapWhack. I found mine own, by having a relatively-uncommon US last name, and then being born in a European country where no one else has that name.
baud147258 5y ago
My mother's maiden appear in one place, which is the correct location for her, even if there's still a few living relatives elsewhere in France with the same name.

nimajneb 5y ago

I thought my last name was a variation of an English last name. But apparently there's ~15000 hits on the map for my last name and only ~1000 for the name I thought was original spelling. I think this is to blame with a very famous musician having the other spelling.

sjmm1989 5y ago

Lol. If I put my last name into UK's map, the map basically turns red.

eddyfromtheblok 5y ago

wow, I found an enclave of my surname on a Catalan island! and in the south of the Netherlands, and over the border in Germany, which I expected. also, I'm not seeing any ads using the Vivaldi browser.

spacemachine 5y ago

Pretty uninspiring results for my surname. Basically just looks like a population map. My surname isn't especially common, but it is quite popular as a first name. So, there might be a high chance chance that a lot of displayed matches are false positives due to first names misinterpreted as surnames.

Scarblac 5y ago

I doubt the accuracy -- my family and I don't show up for the municipality I live in in the Netherlands.

zfxfr 5y ago

If you want to fill the map of France with red color then search for MARTIN.

MarcScott 5y ago

For the names I looked up in the UK, this might as well have been a map of population centres. Almost every surname was focused in London, Birmingham and Manchester. It's to be expected, I suppose, but not very informative.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
Yep, relevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1138/ https://m.xkcd.com/1138/ Without a per-capita adjustment, this is near-meaningless.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Depends what you're trying to extract from the data. For my rare surname, it's tiny circles corresponding to individual households, most of the UKs largest cities have no instances but there is a cluster of small circles in the towns near where my dad grew up. That's more interesting visually than the frequency being <1 per 100k population basically everywhere.
folkrav 5y ago
First thing I did was typing up my French originating surname; big agglomerate right around Paris, then Normandy (where my ancestors came from).

ohples 5y ago

Doesn't seem to like diacritics (ie accents) Tried my name in France with/without the accent. Seems weird for a site related to Europe.

utopcell 5y ago

This site is misleading, tricking you into entering your name on an ad. Also one of the individual country's input fields triggers Chrome's CC popup.

mywittyname 5y ago
This is the impression that I got. I don't see any means of seeing names without actually entering anything. If the site was intended to be used for educational purposes, it would at least show a list of common names by default.

lvxferre 5y ago

I've looked both of my surnames, as they're fairly regional in Europe. Seems accurate.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

What I find rather depressing about these kinds of things is that they will be utterly useless to learn anything from going forward in just a few more generations, after the atrocity of forced integration and so called "diversity" will permanently and irrevocably muddle and pollute all cultures and people and societies all throughout the world. We will soon no longer need to fight over ethnicity and race, because we will all be the same muddled and meaningless mass where the Ministry of Truth tells us that today the Italians are equally Indians, as Nigerians are Swedes. The process is already quite advanced in the USA, where unique cultures, dialects, histories, cuisine, traditions, etc. that existed until rather recently, have been utterly shattered and deracinated and polluted through homogenization and corporatization of society, not to mention both sent into the memory hole and been rewritten a few times by now. To see an even more extreme example of what the outcome of all this "globalization" and fraudulent "diversity" will be is to look to the ancestors of blacks in America that have suffering from the effects of being captured in war in Africa, sold into slavery, mixed together and torn apart socially, and shipped across an ocean where they were then traded and mixed and muddled wantonly just like "diversity" intends to do. They suffer from an acute absence and intentional destruction of what little culture and society they had. That is what the oligarchs of today have in store for all of us regular folks just like the oligarch plantation owners of the past perpetrated on humanity. And don't make the mistake if you think "white people" deserve the atrocity of "diversity" that has targeted them up to this point, it will invariably come for you and your culture and your society too, only there will be no one left and no moral argument to defend your culture then.

vermooten 5y ago
zzzzzzz
boredumb 5y ago
You are expressing a forbidden truth quite well. The marketing power behind this agenda does an incredible job of scrubbing away any of the ill effects of globalization paired with an obvious effort to discredit and obfuscate any coherent arguments against it.
vehemenz 5y ago

theomega 5y ago

Related XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ As the numbers are absolute, these maps are basically influenced by population densities.

IanDrake 5y ago

6510 5y ago

what great data mining tool, I watch my hands type every surname I know in order of familiarity. lol

aosmith 5y ago

What a dumpster fire of ads, how is this on the front page?

dhosek 5y ago

The ad at the top looks too much like part of the site.

jollybean 5y ago

It ends up just being a population density map unfortunately. Names are concentrated in cities, well we knew that. Would be nice to somehow normalise a bit for pop. density.

coward123 5y ago

Here's what I thought was really great about this: My family originated in a European country not included in the list. In the 1600s (maybe even late 1500s) we took refuge in one of these countries that allowed a degree of religious tolerance in a specific area. Over the next century, many picked up and came to the new world. Anyway, point being it was really neat to see my family name still in that very specific area, despite it being a name that would automatically stand out even today as "not from around here."

JaceLightning 5y ago

Scam? I tapped the input field and all of my credit cards came up as options.

Hublium 5y ago

For Austria: https://namenskarten.lima-city.at/de/ https://namenskarten.lima-city.at/de/