Trying to catch up on my e-mail backlog, I came upon the World Names Profiler through my NEHGS newsletter. "The site plots 8 million names, using data that comes from electoral rolls and telephone directories around the world. Covering 300 million people in 26 countries, users can see where certain surnames originated, and where they have migrated to."
Here, for example, is the Wightman distribution map.
(Click map for larger image.)
The site also tells me that "Wightman" belongs to the "European-Other Western" group, that's it's an English language name of the English subgroup, that it is most frequently found (relative to overall population) in the United Kingdom, followed by New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Canada, and that the most common first name coupled with Wightman is John.
Check it out. It seems to have a limitation when it comes to umlauts, however. "Stücklin" produced no results; "Stuecklin" occurs infrequently and only to any degree in Germany and Denmark. However, "Stucklin," without the umlaut, is truly a Swiss name, with very small additional populations in France and the United Kingdom. The top three cities? Basel, Binningen, and Riehen.
