A few weeks ago, I blogged about the various surname distribution maps being posted online by dynastree.com and its associated sites. Now I see that they have posted more of them. I modified the 1st paragraph below to include the Dutch maps which were posted just a few days ago, but not included in the news release.
I recommend these new surname distribution maps, as they are more comprehensive in the descriptions included with the maps, although you may have to translate them with Google or another translation service. And they are FREE!
Hamburg, September 23, 2009 – The family network dynastree.com now features maps for showing the distribution of one’s surname for eleven countries, three new maps of Argentina, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have been added. The maps are now available for Argentina, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. The new maps are available at www.miparentela.com/mapas-ar/ (Argentina), www.verwant.nl/kaarten (the Netherlands), and at www.dynastree.co.uk/maps (United Kingdom).
The free map service, which shows the absolute and relative distribution of surnames for the respective countries, is based on data from telephone books and address databases. One can very easily and quickly get an overview of the geographical distribution and origin of one’s own surname. The name of interest only has to be entered into a search field to view the corresponding map. Statistics about the number of persons with the same name are shown for single counties or regions. These maps are a helpful service and very popular among the users, it is especially used to narrow down research of one’s own family history to single regions.
The results can be used to research the origin of a name, and to find further trails of the family’s history. If the name searched for is not limited to one country, the user is notified and can also use the international maps for displaying the name’s distribution there. This is useful to track down ancestors or relatives if the family emigrated from a country decades or centuries ago. The name “Jackson” for instance is found only about 1,000 times, while there are about 640,000 entries in the US.
It is therefore on the 18th rank of the most frequent surnames in the US. The surname distribution maps can also be integrated into blogs created with WordPress, dynastree.com offers such a widget. It only takes some minutes to let the visitors of one’s blog access the maps. The widget also automatically recognizes the visitors’ language settings and shows the corresponding map in the right language.
Profile of dynastree.com
According to experts, dynastree.com and its international language versions have been among the fastest growing social networks worldwide in the last two years. By now, more than nine million families have created their tree at dynastree.com, and more than 15.000 new family trees are added each day. The venture capital corporations Neuhaus Partners and Hasso Plattner (co-founder of SAP) Ventures recognized the young start-up’s potential early and support dynastree.com as investors.Dynastree.com was founded by the experienced internet entrepreneurs Daniel Grözinger and Sven Schmidt. They have already founded and maintained several internet projects since studying together, such as getgo.de (an online ticketing service), and the FIFA Soccer World Cup Ticketing Center (responsible for managing the ticketing for the FIFA Soccer World Cup in Germany in 2006).
