Surname Maps

There are a number of surname maps on the Internet, and while I know where everyone related to me lives/lived, I still will look at them to see if there isn't anything new, or something of which I am not aware.

So when www.dynastree.ca published its maps of Canada, I had to look for the four family names - Barclay, Blades, Lapointe, and Jobin.

Barclay, my paternal family name, appears in nine provinces, and it is the 1,499th most popular surname in Canada. There are approximately 3,252 people with that surname in Canada, and the three most popular places with the most Barclays are the provinces of Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Blades, my maternal family name, is even less popular in that there are only 842 people with that surname.

Dynastree says that it is the 4,779th most frequent name in Canada.

They don't have a map for England and Scotland yet where Blades and Barclay are from, but it should be coming soon.

Meanwhile, my husband's paternal family name is Lapointe, and there approximately 31,443 people with that surname in Canada. Most of them are located in Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick.

It is the 64th most frequent surname in the country -but all Lapointes can trace their name back to Nicolas Audet, when the French first came to Canada. The surname eventually became Audet dit Lapointe - then Lapointe - so one has to take that into account as a genealogist.

His maternal surname is Jobin, and it is the 724th most popular surname in Canada. There are approximately 6,508 people with that surname.

There is a map of France on the site, so I checked the Jobin surname and it showed them in Western France, which is where they came from in the 1600s.

Overall, this site, and others like it, are not only a lot of fun to use, but are handy tools for research.

Enjoy your trek!