Discussion on Surname Popularity
Following up on the heels last search posts where utilized Google Books and found more instances of the “de Mier” surname, this time I tried a new tack. My search begin on Google but instead of searching for Jose Mier I searched for the term “people with the surname de Mier.”
The search results brought me to a site called forebears.com. I believe in my original search for the Mier surname I happened upon this site, but that was months ago and I didn’t realize where I had found the information. Forebears.com purports to give the amount and density of different surnames throughout the world.
According to forebears and using my original search for people with the surname de Mier, it tells me that there are approximately 517 people in the world with that surname. I’m not sure I trust these numbers, but on the other hand it may be accurate. After all some of the Jose Miers I find are deceased and of course they wouldn’t be counted among the current people with a particular surname that are currently living.
Since I was already on forebears.com I decided to simply search for the surname Mier. The results were pretty close to the information that’s on the Origins page of this website. The information is that there are approximately 26,000 people with the Mier surname around the world.
As you can see from the screenshots I’m including in this article the instances of de Mier are predominately in Spain. The instances of simply mere are predominately in Mexico. That sort of makes sense to me especially since those with “noble heritage” would be found in Spain, a country with centuries of royal lineage. Those who moved to the New World, Mexico that is, would have dropped that particle from their names. The New World would mostly be free of royalty and more egalitarian, so it makes sense.
Again, I take these numbers with a grain of salt but on the surface they do seem to make sense. I mention this because others who were involved in genealogical research might find a helpful tool.
