I have just spent a totally addictive hour with a UK site which has mapped the locations of family names across Great Britain from the 1881 census and the 1998 electoral registers. www.spatial-literacy.org Enter your family name and you will first get a map showing where in England, Scotland and Wales there were people in those records with that name. The spelling does have to be exact, but if for example "Whitric" shows no entries (which means less than 100 were found) then just enter "whitr" and you'll get a great choice to play with. I found "Whitrick" for example to be from the right area for some of my ancestors. Spelling was pretty flexible in the 1700s!! They have extracted 26,000 names ---- and that takes you to some quite uncommon ones! Scottish and English areas are mapped, but unfortunately Irish data only appear in the geographical list. Also click on "1998" map to see where they all are today. "Geographical Locations" above the map will also, if you scroll down, tell you which Australian and which USA states had the most of that name. It's a project of the University of London, and really works very well. Crawford.