Where is your surname from?
A new website was launched yesterday: www.spatial-literacy.org/uclnames/. This shows the geographical distribution of people with particular surnames in 1881 and 1998.
I looked up some family names:
Adams | Full profile | Hide Adams maps
 Adams 1998 |
 Adams 1881 |
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The 1881 map shows a strong concentration in NE Scotland, as well as in the south of England. I always thought that the Adamses originally moved to Ireland from Scotland, but I may be wrong.
The present-day geographic distribution within Britain and Ireland is interesting. Northern Ireland has 118% of the GB occurrence of the Adams name, while the Republic of Ireland only has 25% of the GB occurrence. This probably reflects the strong ethnic bias of the Adams name in the Ulster-Scots population.
Thompson | Full profile | Show Thompson maps
 Thompson1998 |
 Thompson1881 |
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Again, I had thought that the Thompson name was mainly Scottish, but from these maps it looks like it is predominantly from Northern England.
Reid | Full profile | Show Reid maps
 Reid 1998 |
 Reid 1881 |
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Predominantly Scotland, as expected.
Morrison | Full profile | Show Morrison maps
 Morrison 1998 |
 Morrison 1881 |
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Strong concentration in the NW Highlands and in the Outer Hebrides. This is not the normal catchment for migration to Ulster in the 17th and 18th centuries, but there may be a link following the Clearances?
Pinchbeck | Full profile | Show Pinchbeck maps
 Pinchbeck 1998 |
 Pinchbeck 1881 |
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As expected, the main Pinchbeck concentration is near Lincolnshire (the village of Pinchbeck is near Spalding).
Unfortunately the maps for Ireland are not yet available on the site. It would be interesting to see the distribution of the names in Ireland.
John | Family, Technology
where is my surname from.
I have a question about this site. Because the southern counties of England are more densely populated does this skew the results? Is it showing a % of a surname compared with the rest of the county or is it just doing it by numbers? In which case the results will give a skewed picture depending on number of residents in each area. Any thoughts John or shall I e-mail UCL (I know a few of the chaps there).
I’ve sent them an e-mail as their help page didn’t answer my Q. I’ll let you know if I hear back.
I thought it was percentage of population in each county, using what they term an “index” - i.e. the occurrence of the name per million population.
i am trying to find where my name comes from but not sure of the site can u help me
See the links on this post…
What a confusing site, following comment in Times 2 I logged on to find out more about my surname but get nowhere!!! Help please
Yes, the UCL site is not the most user-friendly. Best place to start is “Start a Surname Search” link on top right hand corner of http://www.spatial-literacy.org/uclnames/.
I rxd an instant answer for my query which was great. They may well add on info about the indexing in the help page. They liked my suggestion of having two types of map (a) the index and (b) the raw count.
Any chance of asking them to provide maps for Ireland?