Surnames Mapped Worldwide

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I recently found out, from the paper, about this website: World Names Profiler

It maps surnames (no matter how rare) in 26 countries by frequency, and down to region and county level.

For example, these are the results for the surname Asperger:

Nationally, by far the highest frequency of people named Asperger is in Hans Asperger's homeland of Austria - 13.29 per million. This would suggest around 110 people called Asperger in Austria. But the USA has a higher quantity, about 150 (0.49 per million). Germany has about 95 (1.14 per million).

In Austria the highest frequency is appropriately in Hans Asperger's native Vienna, and the regions directly to the north and east, bordering the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

In Germany the name appears most concentrated in what used to be East Germany, and in Berlin. In a 'Top Cities' section of the site, Berlin is given as the city 2nd in the world for quantity of Aspergers, behind another German town Friemar in the state of Thuringia.

The USA has the city 3rd in quantity of Aspergers - Chicago. But Michigan is the state with the highest frequency of the name. And within Michigan, Dearborn (Detroit metro) and Wyoming (Grand Rapids metro) appear to have the most. Asperger is also dotted across Ohio, Indiana, Illiniois and Missouri, so tends to be in the midwest. As well as Michigan, the name seems to be concentrated also in the St. Louis area and has also moved into California (Fresno, San Jose).

Interesting website. I wonder who they got to look through all the phone books.

thats cool but they got the root to my last name wrong its Greek not Italian

It seems very accurate, I tried all my relative's names which are Swiss. Thanks for posting this.

Great find! Thanks so much for posting it.

It says my family's surname is scottish/celtic - its not. Its german (and is even a german word). I know because I did the family history

You'd think they'd have some safeguard about this - germany is the top country, followed by the other countries I know my family's ancestors are from/spread to. United kingdom is 5th on the list and has like 1/10 of the people germany has. Scotland doesn't even make the top 10

We could not found an exact match for ............... Please search again.

My grandfather was the one who came up with my surname. Before then people were refered to as son of (given name).


P.S.: It's "We could not" find not "found". Must be one of those outsourced web sites.

My mom's maiden name Widel is German, not Polish.

I tried several different names with different ethnicities and each time it showed the same countries -- it just colored them differently. It called a Norman name Irish, and it couldn't identify an obviously Dutch name.