A lot of people asked me about a tool that gives an answer to the question: how many people have my last name? Well, search no more, because I’m about to give you the best options. Want to know how many people in the world share your name? This article has the answers!
How many people in the world have my last name?
It is always interesting to know how many people in the world your surname also have. It’s a gimmick, a nice to know fact, but maybe the answer will surprise you. If, for instance, you live in the USA and you see that the majority of people sharing your surname live in a small town in Italy…well, maybe you should think about looking at an Italian side of your ancestor’s history.
Most of the time you will find that people with the same name are scattered around the world and across countries. But on several occasions you will see some hotspots with clusters of people that share your surname.
But are people who share my surname family of mine?
If you find people in the world that share your last name, the next logical question you will ask yourself is: are they all part of my family in this century or previous ones, via ancestors?
The answer is clear: no. Not everybody who has your last name is a part of your blood relatives.
I, for myself, looked up my own family tree on my father’s side. So what this means is that I looked up all my ancestors that share my surname. I found them up to 1650, which is of course several centuries ago (it’s crazy if you imagine all the historical events my ancestor in 1650 didn’t have a clue that would happen).
During my search, I literally found a whole village filled with people that share my last name, but none of them seemed related to me in some kind of direct way. Maybe if I could research the generations before 1650, there would be a link. But of course, the further you go back in time, the more related we are to each other (remember the story of Genghis Khan and his offspring).
How many people in the world have my last name: tools
But let’s get to the purpose of this article: the online tools to find the people who share your last name.
Forebears
The first one I want to discuss is Forebears. This is a tool you can use to find the spread of your surname in the whole world. You fill in your last name. A drop-down menu will show where you pick your surname. The other options in the drop-down are suggestions made by the tool itself, but I guess your own first written option will be the correct one. After that you perform the search.
As you are forwarded to the result page, the first thing you will see on the left is the ranking of how common your surname is. For my own name, it’s the 370,086th most common surname in the world. Just beneath this number, you can see the countries where your last name is most common.
If you scroll down on the result page, you can see a map of the world. This depicts the spread of your surname. The darker the colour of a country, the more people share your last name. Also nice: at the bottom of the map, you can select countries instead of the world view. Nice and detailed!
How Many of Me
Another tool is How Many of Me. Be careful, this tool only uses data for the United States of America. If you are looking for data from other countries, you have to use the Forebears tool I mentioned above.
How Many of Me is an extra tool I want to mention, because it’s not only your surname you can check, but also your full name. This tool searches for matches, so instead of only your last name, have a look at how many people have your exact name (first name and last name) in the USA.
Conclusion: how many people have my last name?
In conclusion: use the Forebears website to find out how many people in the world have your last name. It’s the most detailed tool with the best overview.
If you are only interested in name matches (first name, last name or both) in the USA, then you can go for How Many of Me.
As an extra: maybe you want to know if a celebrity shares your birthday? Well, have a look at my overview of celebrity birthdays to find out!
Have fun exploring!
Source:
Picture via Pexels
