Map of Surnames in Europe • Hacker News Board

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#11

Post by tsujp » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 11:58 AM UTC

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

Then that shows you the "Places" count from the rankings list here: 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.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#12

Post by tsujp » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:03 PM UTC

gitowiec wrote: post #6

elaus wrote: post #4

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?

Exactly! How come it knows where I live?

Census data would be one way, e.g. (one of many) for the UK.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/...

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#13

Post by huhtenberg » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:06 PM UTC

Not a single Dracula in Romania. Hmm.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#14

Post by k__ » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:07 PM UTC

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.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#15

Post by m12k » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #13

Not a single Dracula in Romania. Hmm.

Try "Impaler, Vlad the"

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#16

Post by meltedcapacitor » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

Nice.

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

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#17

Post by mazr » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:11 PM UTC

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/) 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...

A good API to work with : https://namsor.app/

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#18

Post by neonnoodle » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#19

Post by benlumen » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

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

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#20

Post by Bayart » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 12:18 PM UTC

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.