In the pub last night my friend Nick (happy birthday!) mentioned this website: the UCL Surname Profiler. It does an analysis of the relative distribution of surnames in 1881 and 1998. It's well worth wasting some working time upon.

Johnston turns out to occur most frequently in Shetland and the Lake District in 1881! Running them close is the Scottish Borders which is exactly where my Grandfather's family came from. In the intervening 100 years plus we seem to have become more frequent across the whole of Scotland, the North, and, erm Central London.

What does it all mean....? Who cares! It's just interesting.