I entered Bin laden, hoping to get a likely destination for Sunday afternoon family get-togethers... 'No results found' Pah! A likely story. Those fiendish Al Quaeda peeps are sharp, I'll grant 'em that.

It's probably partly an artefact of the database not including the Gulf States, and partly because the hyper-rich - which the bin Ladens are - don't actually exist in the way the rest of us do.
Interesting story. I dicked around with this, as you would, typing in your own surname and then the surnames of people you know, and then I typed in the surname of my best mate down here. His family are Italian-Swiss, so there was no surprise that there were still people with that name in Switzerland and Italy, but the `city' with the highest concentration of that surname was `Barnet,' and the christian-name listing ranked his mother, then his son, then his (recently-deceased uncle) then his wife, then him. So basically the surname is so rare in this country that I know all of them, and my mate knows the ones listed in Ireland. Which - having a relatively common surname - I think is pretty cool.

That is really cool! I like it! I imagine it would be helpful for picking character names, too,.

You know, I hadn't thought of that. But now you mention it, that's an outstanding idea. I always struggle with character names.

I did my maiden and married name; both are found predominantly in the UK and Australia, with America and Canada running second place. Think maybe it's my Keltic ancestry. Makes perfect sense.

According to my father, his family moved down to South Yorkshire/Northeast Derbyshire from the Wishaw/Lanark area of Scotland. My results do turn up Scotland, but in Alloa and Burntisland, which are a little further north. I suppose it's possible they're distant relations who've simply migrated a bit, but I counsel caution. Years ago the church in the village where I grew up put their parish records on display for the first time in a century or so. One parchment dating from the 1500s listed a Hutchinson family living in the village, who had absolutely nothing to do with us. There was actually another Hutchinson family in the village, to whom we were not related, who had been there since the year dot.
I would guess if your maiden and married names originated in Britain then there's a better than even chance that they'll turn up in the US and Australia at some point. As I said, in my case I think the Hutchinsons wound up in Australia because of their innate criminality.

Edited at 2008-09-04 11:14 pm (UTC)

"in my case I think the Hutchinsons wound up in Australia because of their innate criminality."

Lol!

The same could be said of my father's clan. He was Welsh and Irish extraction (and Cherokee).

My mother hails from Scots and Anglo-Saxon lines. Throw in Scandinavian and German, and that's pretty much it for my melting pot.

Not a bad melting pot, as these things go.