My maiden name is found in both Sicily and Malta. My paternal grandfather grew up in Malta speaking Italian. Researching my surname it's far more common in the US and Australia than here stronger patterns of immigration to those places. My mother's maiden name was French. The French side of my grandfather's paternal family came from both La Rochelle and Alsace. Her French surname is also very prevalent in the southern states of America. My mother also had an Irish grandmother from Limerick, anyone who has Irish ancestors, most of us know that because the IRA blew up the central records office, it's quite hard to get information about Irish family names Not so with the English side of her family who were in and around villages in Kent, the surnames I have for them go back several centuries, they're all pretty bog standard English surnames, like Townsend, a name I imagine which is pretty self explanatory! My paternal grandmother's English side came from North Devon. I've found loads of names on that line, as the church records go back almost pre Reformation. When I first started on my genealogy quest there was a site, possibly on Ancestry, which showed geographical clusters of particular surnames. Although I always remember reading that the prevalence of Scandinavian names, such as Anderson are far more likely to be in the north of England and Scotland.