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!
Map of Surnames in Europe
41–50 of 197 posts
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#42[deleted]
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#43It 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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#44It'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…
Sounds like another (anecdotal) data point for nominative determinism: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20180404-do-our-names-p...
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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#45Pretty 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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#46I'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.
I've come across this one for Italy: 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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#47Would 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."
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#48Is 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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#49It 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.
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.
Re: Map of Surnames in Europe
#50Wow, 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.