Surname Saturday

This should probably be filed under 'When we get bored, bad things happen.' If it crashes your browser –– or your machine — apologies. Really. Sackcloth and ashes.

But if it doesn't, is this fun, or what?
You put some words into this Web app, kill much of a perfectly good Saturday afternoon messing with colors and sizes and shapes and all, and get something to take home for your mom to stick on the refrigerator door.

Cool, no?

Starting with my family surnames, I came up with a graphic that reflects the superior fecundity of the French-Canadian habitant over, well, pretty much everybody. There is one non-French-sounding name you don't need a magnifying glass to read (Baltes), but the rest are pretty hard to find.

OK, it doesn't really reflect any such thing. What it really means is that the Catholic Church in Québec kept voluminous records, a lot of them are online, and I'm lazy.

And that when we get bored, bad things happen.