British surname profiler

Here's a new website that's an informative timekiller: Just type in a British surname and it will show you on a map of Britain where that name is most often found, both in 1998 and in 1881.

The 1881 maps are probably of more interest, since names are less geographically dispersed by the vagaries of modern life. For instance, most Shakespeares in 1881 were found quite close to Stratford upon Avon.

Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes was surprised to find that all the men named Sykes in Britain appeared to be his relatives (excepting adoptees and cuckoo's eggs). In other words, back in the late medieval times when surnames were adopted, only one man (or one set of brothers or cousins) in England chose "Sykes." The 1881 map showed that almost all the Sykes in Britain lived with a fairly narrow radius of one sport in north-central England, thus supporting this genetic inference that all the Sykes go back to one man.

And here's the Hamrick surname map for American states. The state with the highest proportion of Sailers is North Dakota.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer