Ed Hamrick's Hamrick software, maker of VueScan, offers a non-connected treat on its site: Names.

Names is a piece of software that lets you check out the distribution of a given last name in the fifty USA states based on census data from the 1850, 1880, and 1920 Censuses and from phone books from the 1990's. You can either check one of the breakdowns or you can check "all," in which case the software displays the maps in rotation making it easy to see how the names dispersed or contracted across the years.

Try, f'rex, a good Irish name like Riley or Kennedy. Watch the family spread out across the United States with deep pockets in some areas and then, eventually, as of the 1990's become just another 1 in 1000 in almost every state.

A name like TANIGUCHI only provides one map -- the 1990's -- because the name was not common during the earlier dates.

This is all very cool, but when I popped my name in, I got, "Unable to find TOWSE in Database.

Our database contains the 50,000 most commonly occurring names in the United States. Unfortunately, the name you selected isn't contained in this database. Try using a slightly different spelling of this name."

Seems to me if you are one of the 50,000 most commonly occurring names in the United States, the folks showing up in Whitefish, MT, are probably not really from your cohort.

GARCIA gives a more interesting map than BAKSHI, but surprise! surprise! BAKSHI =is= one of the 50,000 most commonly occurring names in the United States.

LYNCH is interesting. Look at the subtle shading telling you that MA is a hotbed of Lynches as compared to the rest of the states.

RILEYs seem to avoid North Dakota.

Fun stuff. Good way to spend time with pretty maps.

   posted by Sal Towse at  8:41 AM|| |