World Names Profiler

Posted by Miss Cellania in Travel & Places on September 9, 2008 at 9:07 am



Enter your family name in the World Names Profiler and find out the distribution of that name around the world. I used my maiden name, married name, and the names of several other people and got the expected results from what I know of their backgrounds -although I was surprised to find my legal last name is more common in Australia than anywhere else! I entered “Li”, which is the most common family name on earth, but got no results, possibly because the statistics would be in Chinese characters. However, Alex’s last name is most common in Indonesia, as expected. I used the graphic from Gerard Vlemmings (the Presurfer) as an illustration, as his name is most commonly found in the Netherlands. Link -via the Presurfer


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COMMENT

25 comments to "World Names Profiler"

  1. sparge
    September 9th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Well, there went my morning! Thanks Miss C!

  2. sparge
    September 9th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    One thing, though? Indonesia isn’t on the database list. Did you mean India? Or Indiana? :)

  3. Miss Cellania
    September 9th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Hmm, I wasn’t looking at a database list. I looked at the world map.

  4. Tiago
    September 9th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    too bad it has so few contries :( mine, Portugal is not in :(

  5. cuimhne
    September 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am

    My surname is most common in France and Switzerland (of the countries listed). It’s an arab name so I’m guessing if more arab countries were included I’d get very different results.

  6. mrmuggles
    September 9th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    Thanks Miss Cellania for the link! It’s not that precise for the numbers, put the ratio is not bad.

  7. Carlos
    September 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    This is not very accurate, in fact, very misleading. I posted my last name and not one single hit from my country of origin.

  8. TwoDragons
    September 9th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    LOL–my surname is almost unknown except in Germany. And my maiden name is about as rare as rocking horse dung worldwide.

    Funny thing is, I know that the only reason my surname pops up anywhere else is because one of my husband’s uncles has multiple residences around the world. (They spend most of their time on a gorgeous 45-foot boat, cruising the world!)

    –TwoDragons

  9. Adam Stanhope
    September 9th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    I got some weird results…

    For “Wang” it didn’t include China at all.

    For “Hussein” no country in the Middle East was included, nor was Pakistan - but India showed up.

    My guess is that their database has big holes in it.

  10. Orjan Morjan
    September 9th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    My name is unique in the world. Makes for an easy email address. :)

  11. sparge
    September 9th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Adam - Only ~20 countries are available so far, the ones that are in grey when you first load the page.

  12. Thomas
    September 9th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Mine is most common in Australia. My a decently large margin, no less.

  13. Thomas
    September 9th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    edit: By

  14. Neatoramawontsendmeapassword
    September 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Mine is most common in New Zealand. I’m into tracing my family tree, and I haven’t even found any relatives with that name there. I guess they’re hiding… LOL

  15. Alli
    September 9th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    My maiden name is most popular in Australia. My married name is most popular in Australia. My sister’s married name is most popular…in Australia.

    Funny, we live in the states and none of us have ever been to Oz. I wonder if this Australia coincidences means something ;)

  16. Monica
    September 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Am I doing it wrong?

    I put in a name and hit ’search’, but no matter what name I put in, the same small group of countries were highlighted in grey

    Boo

  17. euriea
    September 9th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

    My surname, which is of French origin surprisingly displays the least results from France.. though it is most common in Canada, which is where I’m from.

  18. Johnny Cat
    September 9th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    My name is Scottish in origin, but I hit USA and Ireland as the top two.

  19. Stane
    September 10th, 2008 at 4:23 am

    Cool idea but totaly screwed up as it includes statistics from only 1/3 of Europe. :-/

  20. Pol x
    September 10th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Mine is Scandinavian in origin but die to spelling changes is most common in Scotland and Ireland.

    Bloody Scandinavian spelling one S or two S’s son or sen or what?

  21. The Foreigner
    September 10th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    I typed in “Bin Laden” as a test.

    Never knew that was such a popular name in Europe and the United States…

  22. Fer
    September 10th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    If you search “McFly”, in the top forenames you can read “Marty”, as the main character of Back to the Future films.

  23. Ali S.
    September 10th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Huh! Nifty site. I tried my last name and it seems to be quite accurate. A ton of hits in India, UK, Canada, and the US. Never knew my last name was so common.

  24. EEM
    September 11th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    Hehe no shock at all with my last name. I already knew it was Dutch. :P

  25. Maarten
    September 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Funny, a few days ago I made the data of familienaam.be and familienaam.nl (websites that generate maps showing the distribution and frequency of surnames in Belgium and Holland) available in Google Earth. More info here: http://www.merkador.com/?q=content/familienamen Scroll down to introduce your name and generate an overlay for Google Earth.


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