Recently, I came across a new-to- me website, Public Profiler – World Family Names.

This site was created by Paul Longley and Pablo Mateos, both of the University College London and by Alex Singleton of the University of Liverpool.

They have also developed other websites, more centrally linked to the United Kingdom.

What do these sites do? I tried entering “Stufflebean” in the world names section of Public Profiler. I expected that most Stufflebeans would be living in the United States because the name was changed from Stoppelbein by Revolutionary War ancestor John Stufflebean.

A world map that appeared and, as expected, all of the Stufflebeans are, indeed, in the U.S.

I have not had much success with findings Stoppelbeins in Germany. The name seemed to have died out, so I tried a new search with Stoppelbein, U.S and Germany

Again, I clicked on the country, choosing Germany this time.

These Stoppelbeins are in the Rheinland-Pfalz, which is the ancestral home of my husband’s family. There seems to be a bit of spillage into neighboring Hessen. I will have to pursue this!

As I have many ancestors from England, I decided to try a couple of those names, too. Here is the British name search screen:

Interestingly, here there is a choice of 1881 or 1998. Since my ancestors had all left England by the 1700s, I figured 1881 was a better choice for me. I tried two surnames – one I know is less common (Tarbox), while the other has been one of the banes of my existence, rare in colonial America, but quite common in England (Astle).

First, Tarbox brought up one hit. A second click brought up the map.

Not surprisingly, immigrant John Tarbox hailed from Hertfordshire and the name is still tightly concentrated in that area of England.

ASTLE brought up several choices. In my research, both ASTLE and ASTLES have come up in records, so I will focus on those names.

Again, no surprises here because I knew the Astle surname was frequently found in Derby.

ASTLES didn’t bring up vastly different results. The two counties directly west of Derby had the highest concentration of the surname.

This site is fun to use and it’s free. You do have to enter an email to view results, but I have not been inundated with emails or any spam.