Family Names

[poliphilo]

Here's a site (belonging to University College London) that documents the geographical spread of family names in the U.K. The Guardian drew my attention to it. Not surprisingly it's getting a lot of hits at the moment.  

If you have an English/British family name, this site will pinpoint where in the UK people with that name  were concentrated in the sample years of 1882 and 1998 and so- by deduction- where the name originates.

My family name turns out to be West Country. More specifically from the area round Bath. 

Ailz's family name- no surprises here- is deep Lancashire.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've tried a lot of different names and had a lot of surprises.

My sister's married name is Fairweather. That sounds like a English heartland name if ever there was one, right? Wrong. The Fairweathers are smeared out along the East coast- which suggests to me that they're fairly recent immigrants from the continent.