One of the most amusing newspaper articles I’ve read in a long time. My Dad’s friend Gordon told us about it, and he tried to read it out loud to us, using a Maine accent for the quotations, but he was not able to get through even the first few paragraphs while keeping a straight face.

If there are at least a hundred people with a given surname who voted in the 1998 elections in the UK, you can read all about them. While it’s all well and good to see which regions of Great Britain have the most people with your name, or what ethnicity they are (the vast majority of Hopkins are white Englishmen: surprise, surprise!), the real fun comes when you click on the “Geographical Location” at the top of the page. In the “Social Demographics” table, you can find out what percent of people have a more rural-sounding name than you do, or a more high-status sounding name than you do. It also tells you your mosaic type, which, when cross-referenced (Adobe Acrobat has a very handy search feature, click the little binoculars in the toolbar), tells you what the typical person with your name is like. Apparently the typical Hopkins lives in a new housing development near light industry with young children.

Fun for the whole family.