Want to know how common, or uncommon, your name is? Try this extract of an Office of National Statistics database containing a list of surnames in use in England, Wales and the Isle of Man in September 2002. Access is totally free. The list contains almost 270,000 surnames, shared by 54.4 million people.
With it I found that the name Reed ranked 166th amongst surnames with 37217 entries, Reid was next ranking 168th, and Read ranked 226th.
According to the documentation experience suggests that multiplying the result for your surname by 0.93 will give a good idea of the living population for your surname, and multiplying by 3.5 will give the population since the start of parish registers in the 16th century.
