There have been a few questions on subdomains and their impact on SEO, mostly in comparison to subfolders. The closest question I've found is this question but it still doesn't completely answer my query.

I'm setting up a blog for 'Sam Smith'. It's imperative the SEO is based around his full name as he is a prominent blogger and his name is his value. All ccTLD variations of 'samsmith' (samsmith.com, samsmith.cc etc) are taken. However there has been the opportunity to register an obscure ccTLD for 'smith'. In regards to SEO value purely from the URL...

1) Will there be any negative SEO implications on searches for 'Sam Smith' when setting up the subdomain as 'sam.smith.' compared to a more regular 'samsmith.' domain? Will a search engine recognise the subdomain as the full name as oppose to just 'smith'?

2) Are there any negative SEO implications with an obscure ccTLD. For instance if Sam Smith was a prominent blogger in Canada with most of his audience based there, would there be any negative SEO if he had, for example, a .co ccTLD.