An Analysis of the Geographical Distribution of Selected British Surnames

Surname distributions model the population distribution of a highly polymorphic gene. In order to gain information about the population-dynamics in the English-Welsh population the frequency distributions of 8 common surnames are analyzed by means of trend-surface analysis and multivariate statistical procedures. Some of the names show statistically significant dependency on fifth order two-dimensional polynomials of the geographical coordinates. The names with overt differences of frequencies in different areas tend to have marginal areas of maximum frequency