Every family has a story of where is came from. My favorite is that of my great-grandmother who, through a complicated kidnapping scheme that turned out to be a ruse to help her escape a evil stepmother, came to the U.S. on a boat from Germany.

But, how many members of my long-lost family were left in the small German town near the Austrian border? Where did other members of my family originate?

A new site helps answer these questions. No, it's not another gene pool site offering to trace you history by swabbing your cheek -- though that would be *awesome* were it not for the prohibitive cost.

Public Profiler has collected data on over 8M surnames and compiled them into a large database with a map readout. Just type in your surname and you'll be shown country of origin, a list of the most common first names associated with it, and a readout of country density and the most dense global regions for that surname. It's pretty fantastic.

I looked into my married name and laughed out loud as it listed the exact region of the world where we and my husband's huge family live (New Hampshire) as one of the most globally dense spots. Same with my maiden name, which showed a high density in Pennsylvania, exactly the place where my dad's family all came from ... and, oddly, Argentina. Germany and Argentina, really? Just that weird fact alone was worth checking this site out.

Let me know if you learn any surprises about your surname!