Surname Sunday 3.0 - Bordewick and variants

The Bordewick name is the most fractured name in my family tree. I have several spellings to it, including my mother's maiden name, which is the one I use to label all my posts about this branch of the tree. The name originated likely in Germany, though we have not been able to find more than that it was based on the town the progenitor of our family line came from Bardowick, Germany. A short listing of the variants: Bordvig, Bordwig, Bardevich, Bordweich, and of course, Bordwick. These are the ones I will focus on in this post, though I could go much further, if I wanted to be all inclusive for this name. Suffice to say, five is plenty.

Bordewick:

According to Forbears, the name Bordewick is held by 336 people in the world. The largest number of which live in The US. Germany is the second most populous, which is where we believe our line comes from, and Norway and Canada which also figure strongly in our family story, are third and fourth respectively. 

Here's the distribution of the Bordewick name throughout the world. The darker the color, the bigger the representation of the name:

Here is the distribution in the US, where we currently live:

As you can see, the name spelled that way is the most prevalent in Illinois, and not in Washington where we currently live.

And here is the name distribution in Norway, where my great-grandfather was born:

This doesn't even show where he was born highlighted as all, likely because his grandfather spelled his name Bordewich, which is our next set of maps.

Bordewich:

Forebears says that there are currently 74 people in the world with this spelling of the surname, which surprises me. I thought it was the more common spelling of the surname, but maybe I am wrong? Again, it lists the US as having the most Bordewichs, followed by Norway. There are even two in England, and surprisingly to me, one in the Philippines. 

Here's the world map for Bordewich:

And here's the map for the US, showing Minnesota as the most populous state (not a shock at all, really):

And Norway, which does show Northern Norway as a secondary population center for the spelling, which is where my great-grandfather was born:

Bordvig:

There are two other spellings of this surname, as I have listed above, but this is the last I will cover, as Bordwig and Bardevich do not show on Forebears at all. Bordvig has a tiny showing on the site, listing only 2 people currently using the spelling of the name in the world, both in Norway. 

Here's the map showing world placement:

And Norway:

I know that for our family, the surname solidified to Bordewich with my great-great grandfather Johan Petter, who spelled his name with the ch, and once more when my branch of the family moved out of Norway, possibly when they moved to England, where it became listed as Bordewick. I'm not entirely sure what my progenitor was born with at all, nor how he spelled his surname, but hopefully someday one of our line will find papers with his signature and preference for name on them. Until then, I can only speculate.