Procol Harum surname distribution • ongoing

From the UK's 1881 census

This little BtP feature seeks to answer the question, 'Are the surnames of Procol Harum musicians common ones in England, and where do they come from?'.

The maps show the UK, and represent the distribution of the surnames in the 1881 census, before the wide onset of social mobility (arguably a similar survey conducted nowadays would show a much more uniform distribution of the names).

Of course we can offer no guarantee at all that the Procol players are actually descended from the populations shown in our maps, but we hope that this brief survey will not be without interest nonetheless. If you are uncertain who is who, click on the maps.

The coloured areas are British counties. The darker the colouring, the higher the density of the name. Readers will note that 'Royer' is very rare; 'Brooker' and 'Knights' are highly localised; 'Fisher' is unsurprisingly widespread, since fishing must have arisen independently in many localities; 'Reid' is predominant in Scotland; 'Harrison' is widespread in the North of England. 'Grabham' is interesting in that it appears to have two distinct centres.

'Murray', 'Wallace' and 'Renwick' also appear to be localised in the north of Britain, while 'Bronze' was extremely rare at this time; 'Brzezicki' did not occur in the 1881 census, so we show the nearest match ... unsurprisingly, it centres on some major ports. 'Dunn' and 'Phillips' are widespread at this era, while 'Whitehorn' is interestingly localised. Pegg has a Midlands bias and Broad seems to predominate in the South. Lastly 'Spinetti ' did not occur in the 1881 census, so again we show the nearest match ... again, a major port is involved.

Procol Harum online pedigree

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