Monday, March 12, 2007

It's all in a name

I discovered this website a while ago. You enter your surname and it then produces a map showing the distribution of people with your surname in 1998 in Great Britain. Here are the maps for Mr McA, Mrs W and Mrs V.....

Can you work out which map belongs to each of us?



Clue: Welsh connection?














Clue : in the 17th century some Dutch settlers came to Arbroath








Clue: at least one of us sounds Scottish!
Try linking to the website, select 'start a surname search' and put in your own surname. As well as getting a map for the distribution in 1998, you can also find out where people with your surname lived in 1880. Some surnames show a remarkable change. Can you think why?