I would say that nowhere in America would a "non-Anglo-American" surname be remarkable. In some areas the distribution of "non-Anglo-American" names and "Anglo

I would say that nowhere in America would a "non-Anglo-American" surname be remarkable. In some areas the distribution of "non-Anglo-American" names and "Anglo-American" names may be considered remarkable though. Basically, I think he is seeing a trend that he finds interesting, which is a different than finding a particular instance interesting. Put it this way, if I ran into somebody named "Lutz", I wouldn't think anything of it. If I ran across many people with Germanic names though, I might wonder if I were in somewhere like south-central PA (an area notable for a large number of German descendants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch). The distribution would catch my eye, not the particular name itself. (Personally, I'm not really seeing any interesting trends with those names.)