In case anyone is interested this site has had a lot of press recently with many millions of hits. It produces a map which shows where people of the same surname live in the UK and Ireland using past census information. Go to:

http://www.spatial-literacy.org/ and click on search for a surname. There are links to recent press reports and the Observer link has some very good links near the bottom of the page:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ne...686706,00.html

I found a preponderance of my rellies in SW England, Aberdeenshire and Tyne and Wear.

Genealogy is apparently the second most popular search on the internet after a word beginning with P and ending with graphy which isn't photography!

OzTennis

Oh and click on the other links which appear with the map of your surname - frequency and ethnicity, Map of 1988, Map of 181 etc and you can see how you rellies have or haven't moved about over the years.

OzTennis

Has anybody used www.scotlandspeople.com, its also a brill website, i managed to trace my ancesters back to 1850, in about an hour, it was depressing reading though, all miners and paupers

thanks, but no good for my surname as it is a bit of an unusual one and they have not got the data if there are less than 100

They're not necessarily your rellies.

They're just people with the same surname.

When I was tracing, I ended up on a website, and noticed an aunt from my childhood had posted, so i replied, nothing happened for months.

Then just browsing and noticed her daughter had posted for me to get in touch, it is my mum's bros (who is dead now), daughter, they emmigrated to Canada when i was little, and we now keep in regular touch ahhhhhhhhhh

Obviously, if you want to be pedantic it's search for people with the same surname or search for your tribe; it just didn't have the Aussie flavour of 'rellies' or search for 'your mob'.

OzTennis

I think it is scotlandspeople.gov.uk rather than dot com.

Interesting, my lot go back to the 1500's so I'll spend some time later researching further.

OzTennis

oh yeah, sorry, it was a wee while ago now

514,898 Smiths in the UK !! an increase of 20% since 1881

Only 800 of my lot and that's down from almost 1,000 in 1881, We are a dying breed !

No wonder I can't find many, and I spend ages on various Genealogy sites

Well I found it interesting. I put in my grandfather's surname, knowing where he came from and it is a relatively unusual name and the majority of them are in his birth town. There are only 16 left in the country now. They must be rellies. I don't do tribes

Unfortunately I know where all mine are - even more unfortunately they know where I am and are coming to visit.

Nice site. I knew I was Celtic Welsh but it is nice to see the majority of my tribe come from the land of my fathers.