From Bayern to Carroll

I've had some fun recently with a fascinating website called The World Names Profiler. With this site, you can type in your last name, and the Profiler tells you the population density of people with your name all over the world.

So, for example, I entered my last name, and first I saw this chart. "FPM" means frequency per million, so in the country with the highest density of my last name, Germany, 29.76 of every million people have that last name. In terms of regions/states, Bayern, Germany (also known as Bavaria) has a whopping 154.05 per million of my "relatives." You might also notice that Iowa has the second highest concentration. More on that below.

The site also provide maps with population density shown by colors. Germany and Austria are the hotbeds of my name, though even there the population is pretty slim.

In the United States, my name follows pretty standard patterns of German immigrant migration. My own ancestors went to Wisconsin, obviously a well-known German stomping ground. But as you can see, Iowa stands out as the darkest. Now remember that this does not mean the highest number of people with my name, but rather the highest concentration.

So there might be only a few people with my name in the sparsely populated Carroll County in Iowa, but nonetheless, that county has the highest concentration in the world of people with my name.

And I guess I'm included in the light green of Chicagoland.

Anyway, check it out.