Surname distribution

Randy Seaver over at Genea-Musings (I think it should be Gene-Amusings) has posted his Saturday night Genealogy fun, and it highlighted an interesting website, PublicProfiler.com (http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/) where you can enter a surname and see the worldwide distribution of that name. Clicking on the country, will then give you a breakdown, and statistics are displayed both in map form and in chart form.

I entered my maiden name “Osmer”, which as far as I’ve ever known originated in England, and was surprised to see that the US breakdowns didn’t include the states that my family were from as any of the major Osmer settlements! It included the state my dad currently lives in, but shows a large number of the surname in another county than he is in, and doesn’t register his county at all. Hmmmm. I also learned that there is evidently quite a decent contingent of the family also in Germany and Argentina. Go figure.

This obviously has genealogical ramifications, although for now I’m just really even more curious about how I’m related to all those foreign folks!