Posted on by UncleLar

Here’s a surprise

I found this site that will map out the prevalence of your surname in countries around the world.

Here’s the map for Fall and the legend that goes with it (a real Legend of the Falls – pun intended).


This came as a real surprise to me. I have seen lots of references to Falls from Somalia, so I expected something to pop up there. I also thought Fall was of German ancestry so I would have expected an appearance there. But not Canada and Sweden. Food for thought.

NOTE: I did a little digging and discovered Africa hasn’t been indexed yet so no Somalians is understandable. Also, the name is of Celtic (Irish) origin so the United Kingdom over Germany is now understandable.

Now, for an even bigger surprise, it turns out that Larry is the most popular Fall forename (with Lisa and Christopher 2nd and 3rd). Now that I never would have guessed. I am reasonably sure that Abdou and Papa belong to the branch of the Falls who have emigrated out of Somalia.


If you go to the site, you can actual drill down to the country and state level.

4 Replies to “Here’s a surprise”

  1. I knew there were a lot of “Falls” with Muslim forenames, I didn’t know they were Somalian.

    I always thought “Fall” in our case was either English or Scottish, as we were always told we were English-Irish-Scottish-German. “Farrell” & “Loeffel” are Irish and German (I think Irish), so…

  2. That’s right. And Daddy always said “Fall” was English and the Scottish came from “Naylor”, Mae’s last name.

  3. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention. I think my German connection came from studying German in high school. Fall is a common word in German (it has several meanings, one of which is actually to fall or drop) so I assumed it was a German name. I never made the English, German, Scottish, Irish connect to the last names of our grandparents.

    And I got my African nations confused. Our African connection is with Senegal not Somalia.

  4. I did some more digging into this web site and discovered that Pennsylvania has a higher frequency of Falls than Illinois and Utah.

    It appears that Larry has been enjoying his retirement in Pennsylvania!

    New Jersey is up there, too, Gary.

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