
Surnames: Meanings, Origins and Distribution Maps - mikecarlton
http://forebears.io/surnames
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niccaluim
[http://forebears.io/surnames/nicdomhnaill](http://forebears.io/surnames/nicdomhnaill)

Any surname starting with "Nic" and ending with a Gaelic personal name is a
woman's surname. Nic is a contraction of "nighean mhic" (Scottish) / "iníon
mhic" (Irish), meaning "daughter of a son of," and is equivalent to Mac (son
of) for girls and women.

This particular name is the feminine Gaelic form of MacDomhnall (MacDonald in
English), though it's misspelled. The initial consonant in Domhnall should be
lenited to produce NicDhomhnaill, and if it's Scottish, there should be a
grave over the "o."

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adaml_623
One problem with this sort of 'Genealogical' website is their total English
language tunnel vision.

If your surname is short then it will probably have multiple source and saying
the equivalent of "Surnameis 'Smith' therefore your family were once black
smiths" is missing the fact that if your name came from a different country
then that word means something different.

Maybe in the future they'll get more sophisticated.

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rjtobin
The surname meaning for "Tobin" is also wrong, it comes from a Norman surname
"de Saint Aubyn", which I guess the native Irish had a hard time pronouncing.
The website suggested it came from "son of Tobias" (which I guess might have
happened at some point, but is not the usually given history of the name).

Interesting that the three surnames with incorrect histories highlighted in
the comments (so far) are all of Irish origin. Maybe the site is particularly
poor with Irish surname origins?

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gnarbarian
This is cool. But it was wrong for my mother's name bonnar.

[http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?fuseact...](http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/index.cfm?fuseaction=Go.&Surname=Bonnar)

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vixen99
Life is too short to spend it deciphering these confusing map icons.

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richardw
I've wondered at how, despite surnames being our "clan" or "family" names (and
therefore a collection of people) and our first being our individual names, I
seem to meet many more people who share firstnames than surnames.

Any way of telling how wrong I am?

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kissickas
I would say you're probably right. With surnames as the set and first names as
individual elements, the elements can be shared much more often while the set
needs to be a unique identifier. There's only one United States of America and
one Illinois, but there's a Springfield and Riverside in nearly every state
and they all have a Main Street.

Also, people gravitate towards naming their children after people (or just
names) they like, whereas very few change their surname.

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joe5150
"Approximately 16 people bear this surname"

That actually sounds a bit high.

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pandatigox
I think it's interesting how my surname - 'kim' is more prevalent in North
Korea and (surprisingly) Uzbekistan than South Korea

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trynumber9
There were about 170,000 Koreans forcibly relocated to Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan
during Stalin's rule. That might have something do with it.

But, from Wikipedia, the ROK has about 20% of its population with the surname
Kim/Gim/Ghim:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Kor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_South_Korean_family_names.svg)

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de_Selby
Byrne is wrong too. It seems a lot of the entries are wrong based on people's
comments here.

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epimetheus
Interesting, This site claims that there are only 581 people with my surname
in the world.

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brudgers
My impression, sample size one, is that it may under estimate when it relies
on public records because children ate less likely to be counted in some
jurisdictions.

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mcginleyr1
Wrong for McGinley www.mcginleyclan.org

