thanks very much.

Now ever wondered why your ancestors gathered where they did, or where others with your surname live now. A research project investigating the distribution of surnames in Britain answers these questions. And more, another study has found the surnames are still extremely regional. The maps used show the distribution with most people living in the purple areas.

Smith for example, remains the most common surname in Britain, used by more than half a million people, and it has exactly the same concentration it always did in Lerwick, in the Scottish Shetland Islands. Jones is the No. 2 surname, and is the most common among hill farmers in north Wales. Well, one of the instigaters of this project, Professor Richard Webber is with me.

Now, have you got all of the census data?

No, no. The data used for this project comes partly from electoral register. But also, a number of other files which are held by Expairing, which is probably Britain's largest collector of data about individuals.

'cause there're some of us who are fairly predictable. Campbell for example, which he would expect to be, ur, big in Scotland, does appear the purple a bit there at all , to be up there in Scotland. And it appears to be, any, anywhere else which is really bizarre?

Well, Well. I mean that particular map is put in five colors, so I think, a fifth of all the Cambells is in the purple and a fifth in the reds, so a fifth in the oranges and so forth.

Are we near getting any answers as to why these concentrations are, how they are? I mean we did Snow for obvious reasons. I think there were to lots of them. This yellow is in the southwest England.

Well, with 25, 000 names as difficult to generalize, but, what you can do is put them in general categories, so if, for example, you look at names which are people's work. Like my name is Webber, you turn to find there is much more common in the Midlands than in the south of England. If you go to Wales, most people get their names from their ancestors or the same in Scotland. And in Yorkshire for example, a lot of people have names based on the places that they originally lived in or at least their ancestors did .

Now I have to say, I did put a Gray Murphy, ur and it said not found. (Well, that's because. . )And there have been Gray Murphy in Britain for a few decades.

Yeah.

Well, we only got 25, 000 names on this website, but there're, in my back pocket study this week, I've got another 250, 000 names and they're particularly interesting for looking at non-British names, so, most British names are fairly common. And about what we can now do as such is look for the frequency of all names from different parts of the world and different faiths, religions and languages. And this itself is actually extremely useful for names like different immigrant groups and their descendants now live.

So that's made sense. (Yeah. ) We'll look forward to that, thank you very much indeed for telling about it. And you can get the web address on our website. now our main headlines. . .