Answering the age-old question of where do we come from has just become a whole lot easier thanks to one website.
Started in 2012, Forebears is a website that maps out over 11 million surnames. Giving an amazing overview of where people with your last name end up, the ingenious site collects data from a range of sources and combines it into one index.
Drawing data from war records, burial registers, censuses, newspaper mentions and a range of other historical sources, simply type in your surname and you’ll be shown a global heatmap of people with your last name.
Not only can you immediately see where others with the same last name as you live, you can also see how popular your surname is in each country in terms of incidence, frequency and even its ranking in that nation.
Turns out Fallick is the 487,465th most common surname in the world, with 495 people bearing it. There’s only 52 of us in Australia though, as it’s most prevalent in the United States.
Why not give it a go for yourself at Forebears? How common is your surname? Comment below and share your results with us!
