Preston

Ethnic Anglos (as well as those suffering under the yolk of an Anglo name) can now check out the geographic distrubtions of their surnames in the UK at Spatial Literacy.Org.

As an example, here's the distribution of "Preston" in 1881 and 1998.



Doesn't look like the Prestons got up to much over that century. The name enjoyed the ranking of 266th most frequent surname in the UK in 1881. That position fell to 301 as of 1998. So for those of you out there with a grudge against a Preston, take comfort in the fact that we're on our way out.

Prestons appear to enjoy popularity in Leicester, UK; ACT, Australia; Nelson, New Zealand; and Kentucky, USA.

As for given names, according to Seven Levitt's book Freakonomics, "Benjamin" ranks as the #1 most common "high end white-boy name" (among Californians at least, not that they're representative of the U.S. or global population). Um. . .great. . . I guess. . .