Geotagged at Nokia House Berlin, Invalidenstraße, Berlin (52.53105,13.38521)

London Mapped By People's Surnames

The rather geotastic James Cheshire and Ollie O'Brien from London's UCL have produced a map of London which is certainly not your average map. The Thames is shown winding through the capital but what really grabs the attention is the fact that the rest of the map shows the population's surnames.

As James says in his accompanying blog post ...

London is renowned for being a diverse city but this is barely reflected in the most prevalent surnames- only a few name origins can be discerned from the map. You have to look a little further down the surname rankings for this diversity to become apparent. The surnames shown on all 15 maps can be traced back to one of 38 origins; I have selected unique colours for 10 of the most popular. Surname origins were established using the Onomap classification tool. We are mapping the origins of the surnames, which are not necessarily the same as the origins of the people possessing them. Many people in London have adopted Anglicised surnames.

Gary
Gary Gale

I'm Gary ... a Husband, Father, CTO at Kamma, geotechnologist, map geek, coffee addict, Sci-fi fan, UNIX and Mac user