Dear Donkins

Did you know there are 4,770 of us sharing this surname in the UK? The biggest concentrations of Donkins are in County Durham and Norfolk. Donkin is the 2,178th most common name in Great Britain.

This compares with 729,862 Smiths, nearly 40,000 of them in Greater London alone. There are enough British Smiths to populate a country like Iceland twice over with plenty to spare.

A few years ago we were holidaying in the US and had just driven south out of the Sequoia National Park. I noticed a road sign that said Donkin Drive by the side of an orange grove. So we stopped our car and the family lined up under the sign while I took their photograph.

A man appeared on a quad bike with a rifle straddled across the handlebars. The owner of the land, I assumed, who wanted to know what we were doing. "Hello," I said, extending my hand. "I'm Richard Donkin."

"So am I," he said. It turned out that our fathers both shared the same Christian names but we were not related. He had emigrated to the US from Zimbabwe which he still called Rhodesia. A Rhodesian flag flew over his house. Funny people, these Donkins.

The site link above allows people in the UK to check the regional spread of their own surnames. Personally I was shocked, there are just too many Donkins.