Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Map of Surnames in Europe

surnamemap.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 197 posts

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#71

Post by eb0la »

melenaboija wrote: post #55

It is sad that most, if not all, of the databases don’t take into account accents and other phonetic signs. My last name is completely different with and without and accent. Actually in my case different languages, without accent is a Spanish last name and with the accent is Catalan. That means that people like me have to keep record of our real names. Also curious that databases have been one step backwards, in Spai…

They still keep that records. During the spanish civil war they had better data than the goverment.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#72

Post by plcguy »

emptyfile wrote: post #61
wazoox wrote: post #60

Vaguely related amusing bit of trivia: the word for smith or blacksmith is one of the most common names about everywhere: Smith (England), Schmidt (Germany), Smit/Smet (Belgium, Netherlands), Fabre/Favre/Lefèvre/Lefèbvre (France), Ferrari/Fabri (Italy), Ferrero/Herrero (Spain), Ferreiro (Portugal), Kowalski (Poland), Haddad (Morocco), Demirci (Turkey), Demirdjian (Armenia), Gof/Goff/Le Goff (Brittany, Wales), Gowan/G…

Kovač(Kovacs, Kovac, Kovach) in Croatia.

also Slovakia/Czech

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#73

Post by throwaway0a5e »

melenaboija wrote: post #55

It is sad that most, if not all, of the databases don’t take into account accents and other phonetic signs. My last name is completely different with and without and accent. Actually in my case different languages, without accent is a Spanish last name and with the accent is Catalan. That means that people like me have to keep record of our real names. Also curious that databases have been one step backwards, in Spai…

Tons of surnames were truncated or spelled phonetically over the years because not everyone wants to hand hold an immigration official through the proper spelling of a name that they can't pronounce and may have characters that aren't in the alphabet they're using. Even if you don't say "screw it, good enough" after the first few syllables you can lose resolution because there can be multiple character combos that generate the same sound in the source language but there may be fewer used for that in the destination language.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#74

Post by aasasd »

tompagenet2 wrote: post #2

Is 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.

Presumably not normalized—but I still can see the trends, e.g. of top two surnames in Ireland, one is more popular in south and the other in north.

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#76

Post by mbg721 »

k4shm0n3y wrote: post #62
krylon wrote: post #35

It'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…

Reminds me of a scare I had when I was dating my now wife. We were discussing our families and turns out our mothers had the same first name... and their maiden surnames were the same. It's a fairly common Irish name and there was no traceable relation but talk about a potential freakout! Made for a great bit during my father-in-law's speech at our wedding.

"Wait a minute...my dad's name is Leo Varadkar too...Mom!?!?!?"

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#78

Post by rootbear »

emptyfile wrote: post #61
wazoox wrote: post #60

Vaguely related amusing bit of trivia: the word for smith or blacksmith is one of the most common names about everywhere: Smith (England), Schmidt (Germany), Smit/Smet (Belgium, Netherlands), Fabre/Favre/Lefèvre/Lefèbvre (France), Ferrari/Fabri (Italy), Ferrero/Herrero (Spain), Ferreiro (Portugal), Kowalski (Poland), Haddad (Morocco), Demirci (Turkey), Demirdjian (Armenia), Gof/Goff/Le Goff (Brittany, Wales), Gowan/G…

Kovač(Kovacs, Kovac, Kovach) in Croatia.

And Hungarian (Kovács)

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#79

Post by arethuza »

k4shm0n3y wrote: post #62
krylon wrote: post #35

It'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…

Reminds me of a scare I had when I was dating my now wife. We were discussing our families and turns out our mothers had the same first name... and their maiden surnames were the same. It's a fairly common Irish name and there was no traceable relation but talk about a potential freakout! Made for a great bit during my father-in-law's speech at our wedding.

In the part of Scotland I come from there was a distinct lack of variation in surnames - so much so that people would use so-called "tee-names" to identify different families

e.g. My ancestor David Wood had the family tee-name "King":

http://www.pirieonline.uk/history/PFWv1-o/p1444.htm

Re: Map of Surnames in Europe

#80

Post by jonenst »

This website is overloaded with adds. It almost feels like a scam. Based on the fact that almost all other comments are not talking about it, I guess at least one of the following hypotheses is true (if not all of them): - most people here use an efficient addblocker - The website changed since its first appearance on the first page (maximize revenue?) - some comments are sponsored - on mobile it feels overwhelming but on desktops it's more bearable
Post reply on HN