Genealogy is not a subject that particularly fascinates me, but when I came across this website I still wanted to learn more about my last name. It turns out that it is not very widespread and only 1500 people carry it in the whole world… and the majority of these people live in the United States; distant cousins from America?
But that's not all, I learned a lot of super interesting things about my last name thanks to the site Forebears ! Once I was done with mine, I sifted through the names of all my colleagues... in short, I ended up spending quite a bit of time on this 100% free site!
A goldmine of information on names from around the world
Translated into many languages, including French (partially), Forebears allows you to perform surname research but also on the popularity of first names.
Searching for first names and last names is quite similar and returns a lot of information.
First, the site will tell you how popular the name is worldwide. It will also tell you how many people have the same name and in which country it is most common.
A small box gives you the meaning of the first or last name.
And that's just the beginning. The site then offers a world map allowing you to display the distribution of the name on the globeThis map is completed with a table with the top 10 countries where the name is most represented.
Finally, a little further on, Forebears displays a table of phonetically similar names… quite interesting for discovering variations of your name.
More anecdotally, Forebears offers other small utilities such as a name generator for your baby that will help you find a first name for your offspring. To do this, you will be able to enter criteria such as gender, the country of origin, its popularity, the length of the first name…
