Pharyngula::Surnames on the march

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Monday, March 21, 2005

Surnames on the march

PZ Myers • 21 Comments

Here's an interesting historical snapshot: a site that uses phonebook and census information to build maps of surname frequencies. Just type in your last name, select a year, and click, it shows you where people with your name were living in 1850, 1880, 1920, and 1990.

Here you can see how the Myers clan infiltrated the East and Midwest, and eventually spread to cover the entire nation.

You will be assimilated. We will conquer all.

Once we defeat the wicked Johnsons, at least.

(via Linkmeister)

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/2055/xboAzF1H/

Comments:

#19305: Chris Clarke — 03/21 at 10:36 AM
For a little fun bit of schadenfreude at the expense of xenophobic wingnuts, try entering "Gonzalez" into the database.

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

#19306: jmorrison — 03/21 at 10:48 AM
it's a bit worrisome actually. the amount of morrisons in the 1990 chart saw a catastrophic drop, as did myers it seems. what's going on?! have all my peoples fled back to the little green isles from which they came? are they uniformly idealists who prefer not to reproduce in such a world? are they all children of broken homes who took their mothers maiden name before getting their forst apartment? will it be up to me and my few remaining kin to return this noble name to prominence?! nah. who's got the time?

#19308: — 03/21 at 10:53 AM

Once we defeat the wicked Johnsons, at least.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

All your states are belong to us!

Neil Johnson

#19312: Nullifidian — 03/21 at 11:55 AM
My last name is fairly unusual, and I was interested to see that it bounced from state to state before becoming more or less evenly distributed in 1990 (with a slightly higher proportion in Oklahoma). And furthermore the dispersals make no geographic sense. We were 1 in 10,000 in everywhere except for Maryland, where we had a 1 in 1,000 representation. Then the same ratio held, but moved to Alabama in 1880. Then in 1920 we took Iowa. Weird.

"We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

#19316: PZ Myers — 03/21 at 01:41 PM
Oh, no...the Johnsons are on to us. We'll have to accelerate our plan and marry all of their women.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#19317: — 03/21 at 01:58 PM
Reap - only place with a concentration of us is eastern Pennsylvania - esp. Scranton area (most are my relatives in some way). Been this way since the 1830's according to my genealogical investigations. My Dad made a game of looking up Reap's in the phone book when he travelled. Often there were none, even in large cities. When we moved to Houston, TX in the mid-1960's there was one other Reap listed. So he called them. They were an African American family that had always been in Texas. Everyone involved had a good laught about it.

#19318: Linkmeister — 03/21 at 02:18 PM
It occurs to me that I'm somehow linked to both the Johnsons (via a grandmother) and the Myers (by virtue of living next door to some in Northern Virginia). What's a body to do?

#19320: — 03/21 at 02:27 PM
Where have I heard "we will assimilate" before? Yes that's it PZ is really a BORG!

#19321: Chris Clarke — 03/21 at 02:28 PM

It occurs to me that I'm somehow linked to both the Johnsons (via a grandmother) and the Myers (by virtue of living next door to some in Northern Virginia). What's a body to do?

Move.

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

#19322: Jeremy Osner — 03/21 at 02:31 PM
I'm not in their database -- damn and blast!

#19324: paperwight — 03/21 at 02:47 PM
I'm in their database, but my surname is apparently very rare: dark blue everywhere except for three states, which are light blue. I'm familiar with the immigration pattern that created the light-blue in one of the states, but the other two, you got me.

#19325: Linkmeister — 03/21 at 02:54 PM
Chris, I moved away from those neighbors in 1968 and haven't seen 'em since. (He must have had some redeeming value, though: he worked at COMSAT.) The Johnson grandmother, on the other hand...

#19326: mikez — 03/21 at 03:28 PM
Has only the most common 50,000 names. Bummer. Would have been nice to see, though I can make a good guess at the pattern. My (Eastern European) surname is extremely rare. Going the dead tree research route I've determined that I'm the only person with this surname in the State of Arizona.

#19330: — 03/21 at 04:53 PM
Pshaw! We Wilkinses are much more common.

Umm... that didn't come out right...

#19335: Ben — 03/21 at 05:20 PM
Looks like we trickled down from New England, before swarming into Montana like locusts in the late 19th century for some reason.

Damn Smiths think they own everything...

"The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them." --Thomas Edison.

#19340: — 03/21 at 06:44 PM
Hey, I resemble that remark ...

Which reminds me of a friend who once asked if I ever looked up my name in phone books in different cities ... As a Johnson it seemed pointless (her last name was far less common so she thought it was fun). However on my first trip to Minneapolis I did look up Johnson ... which of course fills half the dang book.

#19351: Neil — 03/21 at 08:09 PM
That's cool - I don't know how common "Saunders" is in the USA, but we appear to have moved north up the E coast from a stronghold in Florida...

Then again, I notice that the population statistics are frequencies (e.g. 1/100). So you could interpret changes in various ways? For instance if everyone but your clan moved out of state, you would appear to increase, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that more of you had moved in.

#19360: — 03/21 at 08:43 PM
Eagar, also spelled Eager, is noticeable in only 3 states, Idaho, Utah and Arizona (where there is a town named Eagar), which is due to 3 brothers who joined the Mormon battalion and sailed to California and then spread out.

This would appear to be the early settler effect, as the Mormon Eagars were a tiny fraction of the extant Eagars about that time.

David Hackett Fischer has a great deal about how names spread in 'Albion's Seed.' Names of early colonists of Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania are way overrepresented today.

#19397: — 03/22 at 01:54 AM
As I expected, Levy is most common in New York, where it is more common than one in a thousand. It's also common in Florida and New Jersey, which again is expected. In California the frequency is relatively high, though, which I didn't expect, and I have no clue about why Louisiana has so many Levys.

#19412: jmorrison — 03/22 at 07:47 AM
me not know how read information key. me very embarassed. me obviously not fit so probably not survive. i doubt one less morrison in new york will alter the map though. me stay quiet for while (woeful hooting).

#19471: — 03/22 at 06:23 PM
I tried a bunch of surnames besides my own (not very common at all) and most of them end up in 1990 almost evenly distributed, shades of green for the most part, just like the Myers map above. Might say something significant about the mobility of the modern US population.

Wonder what the maps for a longer-settled country (e.g. the UK) would show?

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Monday, March 21, 2005

Surnames on the march

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