Missing an annual treat, new data, and surname distributions

This past weekend, I should have been away, at the annual conference of the Guild of One-Name Studies.  But, like so many other events, this has had to be postponed until next year, due to the current Coronavirus situation.  A "virtual AGM" was held - which I managed to miss (oops!)  Let's hope everyone keeps safe and well until next year, as it is always such fun (and educational, of course!) when we meet up for the weekend.

The current lovely weather has meant that my garden received more attention than my Study did over the past fortnight - apart from replying to a couple of queries, both of which involved the PARRY DNA Project, as well as genealogy, I haven't done any research at all!

But there's plenty to be done - these are the numbers of PARRYs in the databases that FindMyPast have added in the last two weeks:

FindMyPast Friday email dated 17 April 2020 

• Surrey Burials - 133
• Greater London Burial Index - 816
• United States Billion Graves Index - 1756
• Canada Billion Graves Cemetery Index - 123

FindMyPast Friday email dated 24 April 2020

• Kent Baptisms - 374
• Kent Marriages and Banns - 396
• Kent Burials - 379

Those will keep me busy (when I get around to looking into them 🙂 )

A recent query on the Guild's mailing list about the old "publicprofiler" surname distribution site resulted in this link to a current website being posted - https://gbnames.mappingdutchman.com/

It's always interesting to look at the results for PARRY on sites like this.  I know what I would expect, based on the data, but the picture presented can vary.  One of the nice things about this new site is that, rather than the limited date ranges of the previous, this one now includes results for most of the census years, as well as more recent data.  There's also a slider so you can easily follow the pattern of change over time.

For 1851, the earliest date, the map shows concentrations of the surname PARRY from Anglesey, across all of North Wales and into Lancashire, another concentration around the Herefordshire/Monmouthshire border area, a third in London, and a final, less concentrated, area around about Birmingham.

By 2016, the North Wales concentration centres more around Liverpool, the Herefordshire/Breconshire concentration has moved south, centering more on the Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire border area, the London concentration has expanded and the Birmingham concentration has both expanded and become more dense.

In various intervening years, the North Wales and Birmingham/West Midlands concentrations join up and then split apart again.

There are several factors to consider with regard to comparing distributions like this, such as how the data has been organised (eg by counties, administrative areas, or postcode areas), whether it shows total numbers, numbers as proportions of the general population, or as percentages of the total in that surname etc. and I haven't yet read all the details about the methodology used on this site.

But it reminded me of the work I did years ago, in 2005, on plotting distributions of the PARRY surname.

This was one of the series I produced from the census data, showing the actual numbers of PARRYs in each of the English and Welsh counties:

The distributions of PARRYs in censuses, per county, based on actual numbers per year.

And this is one of the maps produced during my attempt to plot a modern distribution of the PARRY surname, based on electoral roll data for 2002:

Point distribution of the PARRY surname in 2002, based on Post Towns

All of which reminds me that I really must deal with getting my old web pages back online, as there is so much fascinating information in them!