The last name (also called surname or family name) of a person can not just indicate the family to which a person belongs but, depending on the culture, these names may also denote geographic region, occupation and sometimes caste (or religion) of that person.
I met someone the other day with a very unique surname – he told me that his surname was same as the name of the village where he was born and that everyone in the village shared the same last name. Now image if tomorrow he gets to meet another person with the same "rare" surname, chances are that the other person is also from the same village.
So how do you find people who share the same last name (or surname) as you? Well, use Facebook.
Facebook has added a new Family search option that lets you search Facebook members by their family name. Just type in a few character of your last name in the search box and it will show you a paginated list of all Facebook members that share the same last name.
You can literally run into thousands of profiles if you have a fairly common family name (like Agarwal or Patel) but for those uncommon surnames like Zuckerberg or Battelle, Facebook family search is something worth exploring. Thanks Orli.
More resources related to names:
- Pronounce Foreign Names Correctly
- Find Geographical Distribution of a Surname
- Find Gender from the Name
- Spell Your Name on the Phone