Huh, there’s only about 300,000 people worldwide with my surname. I would have guessed more, since it’s French and there’s actually a couple of famous historical figures who have that surname too.
I feel the same way, but it turns out “the Ripper” is a pretty unusual name.
Is this possibly a completely Anglocentric, Distorted Map. Fails to recognise common letters used in e.g. German alphabet, doubt any better when it comes to Slavic alphabet.
Also highly doubtful that they have same access to records from e.g. Uzbekistan as to Australia. One of my ancestors name, which is Jewish and comes from Central Europe apparently only exists in Australia.
Puzzling, possibly classic case of Big Data combined with distorted, at best non-existent Analysis.
The site doesn’t have an entry for my surname with the correct capitalization, so I picked the Anglicized version (which is pronounced so differently from the French pronunciation it’s really two different names) and this is what I got:
I’ve got just under 800,000, which still seems a little low. Apparently there are 32,401 Nigerians with my surname.
The dataset looks really wonky. I bet there’s better visualizations with more complete data available from google in some google code project.
I wonder how many of them were wealthy, long-lost relatives who left you money that must be transfered out of the country.
Now I understand why I always get selected for additional screenings on flights to and from the US: there are only about 6000 people with that name and most of them apparently come from Syria and Morocco. Data’s incomplete though because it only finds one incidence in my country. I know of at least 3.
If I were you I’d email every single one with an incredible offer immediately. Here’s a suggested opening to get you started:
Dear Respected One,
GREETINGS,
Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I got your contact from the International web site directory. I prayed over it and selected your name among other names due to it’s esteeming nature and the recommendations given to me as a reputable and trust worthy person I can do business with and by the recommendations I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business.
(I am your long lost relative, etc)
“Boundegar the Ripper” - straight outta Sherlock Holmes!
Looks like the French actually did get away with taking control of North America. Huh.
Paul Prudhomme was their secret weapon!
I tried a few names spelled in Cyrillic and got no hits, however it looks like they have some Cyrillic alphabet info. Slavic surnames written in Roman alphabet show multiple similar spellings. Part of the problem in my family is we don’t know how my relatives in the Old Country spelled their names in Cyrillic, and someone at Ellis Island may have just fudged the US spellings based on what it sounded like verbally, meaning we could have lots of relatives we don’t know about, with different spellings of the name.
My name ain’t in there…
I have three family surnames for my full name. Funny thing is, most simple searches result in hundreds of women who share my name (not the entire). “I am 1 of 5,497. Resistance is futile.”
Kelly, possibly changed from Kelley (but no proof) in 1775, when my namesake arrived in New Orleans. I think it’s interesting that there’s higher density of this spelling in Ireland than the U.S.
Time to go look up some long-lost relatives.
Hicks is highest in density in St Kitts and Nevis. Again, time to go look up some long-lost relatives.
I get web page can’t be loaded. 
Slut.
I got that with Chrome, but it loaded fine in Firefox. And I’m not gonna try IE because…it’s IE.
