Naming networks and clustering

Abstract

Most of the literature on names and ethnicity reviewed in the previous chapters is typically only concerned with one of the two elements in a person’s name, either forenames or surnames, but not both in conjunction. This is rather striking, since the previous chapters have demonstrated that different socio-cultural interactions result on uneven name frequencies between population groups and across space. These distinct naming practices simultaneously interplay with both surnames and forenames weaving distinct networks of naming connections between the two. This chapter first reviews one previous, yet rather limited, approach attempting to exploit these connections, to then propose an innovative network representation of such linkages. In doing so it establishes a remarkable relationship between cliques of highly dense connections of forename-surname pairs in social networks and cultural proximity of ethnic groups using network clustering techniques. The existence of these naming communities can be demonstrated without any prior knowledge about a name’s origins. The resulting new name-based ethnicity classification, termed Onomap, conforms an innovative method of community assignment to reveal the degree of isolation, social integration or overlap between population groups in our rapidly globalising world.