Global surname website launched

People interested in their family history can now find where their relatives have spread around the world by using a public website which maps surnames.

A team of geographers from University College, London, have used data from electoral rolls and telephone directories to map the distribution of 10.8 million different last names.

The information, which covers a billion people in 26 countries, shows amateur researchers just where different names originated and where families have scattered around the world through migration.

The online maps also have information on which of 6.5 million forenames are most closely associated with different surnames and lists the top regions and cities for the presence of each last name.

Professor Paul Longley, one of the researchers, said: "This enormous database is a real step forward in family research because the information is not just historical but geographical. We can link names to places - a name is now not just a statement of who you are but where you are."

He added: "Now you can look at the distribution of 'Berlusconi' in Italy or 'Clinton' worldwide and see where it is concentrated".

The study, presented at the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference, was based on research on the distribution of 25,000 Anglo-Saxon surnames in the UK.

Prof Longley and colleagues Pablo Mateos and Alex Singleton have spent the last 18 months - with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council - scaling up the programme to include data from America, Europe, Asia and Australasia.

Most surnames originated in specific places in the world and remain most frequent in those areas, but have often spread to other countries because of migration, the researchers said.

The maps also show that once families have moved to a new part of the world, they can remain concentrated in the local area where they settled - for example the prevalence of Welsh names in Patagonia, Argentina.

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