Surname Distributions: Trahan and Pemberton

Randy over at GeneaMusings has challenged us for another night of Saturday night genealogy fun. This time we are to go to the Public Profiler website and determine the distribution of our surnames. I chose to look at my father's and mother's surnames of Trahan and Pemberton, respectively.

There were no surprises for Trahan. Everyone in southwest Louisiana knows that the Trahan's were Acadians who were exiled from Nova Scotia in the 1700s. It looks like Trahan has the highest frequency in the U.S. and Canada with 93.75 FPM in Canada and 50.81 FPM in the U.S. The top regions are Louisiana with 1,926.36 FPM and Quebec with 560.76 FPM. The next highest frequency regions are Vermont, Mississippi, and New Hampshire. Many Acadians were exiled to the northeastern U.S., so this is why Vermont and New Hampshire have the highest rates after Louisiana. I assume Mississippi is just a bunch of transplanted Louisianians.

Pemberton is most frequent in the U.K. with 125.38 FPM. Next is New Zealand with 108.28 FPM and Australia with 94.36 FPM. In the UK, it is most frequent in the North West, West Midlands, and Yorkshire and Humberside.

UPDATE: I went back and looked up the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, Merlene Golda Mertena. Mertena has to be the hardest to find name in my tree. I had no luck. All I found was a Mertena in Washington, where my great-uncle and his son live. Darn! That is the only place in the world where there is a Mertena, and I already know those Mertena's!! I told you it was the hardest name to find!