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Due to an incident in history known as la conquista, most of the last names in Latin America, the Philippines and a few other regions are Spanish in origin. It’s hard to believe that relatively small country such as Spain has had so much influence on culture, language and that so many of us still wear the last name of whatever Spaniard was spreading his seed around our ancestors’ homeland back in the day.

If you are curious about where your last name comes from and how it’s spread throughout the Iberian peninsula, the Spanish National Statistics Institute has a gadget for you. By entering your last name in their application, you can see where the highest concentration of people who share your apellido in Spain are located, which normally points to its region of origin. Not surprisingly, many Latino last names common in the U.S. are linked to Andalucia, the southern region of Spain that was home to many conquistadores.

You can see the popularity of your last name distributed geographically on a map, and a chart also tells you exactly how many people with your last name live in Spain (including whether or not they have your last name as a primer apellido, segundo apellido or both), and where they live. You can also see how many of these people were born there and how many are immigrants. Perhaps totally useless information, but if you are nerd like me it’s fun for a few minutes.

Pictured: Map of the geographic density of the last name Rodriguez, the 6th most common last name in Spain and the 22nd most common in the U.S.

Related: About.com’s list of most common Latino last names and their origins

Via / 20 Minutos