The geographical distribution of both surnames was investigated at three time periods:
- Modern distribution of the Brymer surname in 1998 using PublicProfiler[i]
- The Archer Surname Atlas[ii] was used to plot data from the 1881 census both by actual number (showing the full spread of the name) and per 100,000 people (showing the more populous areas which are more likely to relate to the origin of the name). Data was shown per county and a county map of the UK can be found here.
- The Banwell Index was used to find the surname density per county compared to the density that would be expected if the surname were evenly distributed over the whole country. It is calculated as follows:[iii]
a = number of occurrences of surname in the county
∑a = population of the county
b = total number of occurrences of the surname
∑b = population of the country
A Banwell Index of one would indicate a surname had the same concentration in that county as it would at a national scale, whereas a value of two would indicate it was twice as concentrated and so on.
- Parish record data was collected for each county where the name was present in the UK using FMP and ScotlandsPeople and exact surname searches. The marriage data was then mapped using GenMap UK.[iv] This allowed geographical distribution before the effect of migration caused by the industrialisation in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be shown.
- The marriage data was compared with IGI totals per county and plotted at a scale of 1 per 100,000 entries to give an idea of density, rather than the Banwell Index.
[i] PublicProfilerGB names. (2008) Brymer 1998. http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map.aspx?name=BRYMER&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=name : accessed 28 May 2016.
[ii] Archer, Steve. (2003) The British 19th Century Surname Atlas. http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/satlas01.htm : accessed September 2015 – June 2016.
[iii] Rogers, Colin D. (1995) The Surname Detective. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 21-22.
[iv] Archer, Steve. (2002) GenMap UK: The Genealogical Mapping Tool. http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/genmap01.htm : accessed September 2015 – June 2016.
Brimer-Brymer database last updated at 2016-07-02 00:29:43 with 4028 census records and 2856 individuals