What's the most popular surname in your country?

My previous blog was about popular first names ... now for a blog about popular surnames (ie, last/family names)!

But before we get started, here's a little pop-quiz - what country is my friend Mr. Foley's surname from?

I recently saw the following interesting map on dadaviz.com. It shows the most common surnames in some of the countries around Europe.

And, of course, with any interesting map, I like to try to create my own SAS version!

I used Proc Gproject to clip out a rectangular region of the map similar to theirs, and then used the %centroid() macro to estimate the x/y center coordinate of each country. I then used annotated labels to place the most common name at each of those x/y locations. Some of the names had tricky characters, and I used the "Albany amt/unicode" font, and specified the characters as hex codes for those names.

And here's the SAS map I was able to create. Note that if you click on the image below, then you can see the interactive version - then you can hover your mouse over each country, and see the country names!