Uncommon Family Names

Some of us have family names that you just don’t see very often. And then there are some of us who have family names that you would never see at all unless you were looking. I have one of the later.

My name is Ceely. It’s not a common name however it is spelled, and spelled my way it becomes very, very rare. In fact, there are only three hundred and twelve (312) of us in the world right now.

Cool Website Alert!!! Forebearers.io   All information in this post is from this site. It’s interesting and enjoyable, and it’s easy to use. I have to go back and look up Smith, or Jones. It would also be fun to look for names that seemed common but weren’t, or vice versa.

The site also gives you a ranking of your name on the list of most common names. So, I’m thinking that Smith would be about number ten, or in the top twenty anyway. Ceely comes in at number 659,592.

There’s also a breakdown by country showing where the people with your last name live. I was somewhat surprised to discover that there are one hundred and fifty eight (158) in America. It has never seemed like that many to me. I became a lawyer in 1991, and I looked up lawyers named Ceely in the big directory. There was only one; she worked and lived in Florida. I brought the total to two.

The chart showed one Ceely living in Thailand. That would probably be me, although maybe I should check. Maybe try Facebook, “ceely Thailand.” That might work.

Further Amazement

My first wife had an unusual family name as well, Supp*. I ran Supp* through the name search and sure enough, only a total of four hundred and sixty eight (468) in the world, with two hundred and thirty one (231) in America.

So, I wondered, how many Ceelys have ever married Supp*s? That would push the coincidence way up into the stratosphere. We have two sons, and I’d have to guess that the number of people currently living on the earth whose parents consist of one Ceely and one Supp* must be very low. Would “under ten” even begin to cover it? Maybe our sons are the only ones.

Fascinating!

(And thanks, Ed, for the link to forebearers.io.)