相关论文: Evolution of popularity in given names

We analyze the social mechanisms that shape the popularity rise and fall of the names given to newborn babies. During the initial stage, popularity increases by imitation. As the people with the same name grow in number, however, its usage…

In social sciences, there is currently no consensus on the mechanism for cultural evolution. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for the researches in the field. Here we perform statistical analyses on…

The frequency distribution of personal given names offers important evidence about the information economy. This paper presents data on the popularity of the most frequent personal given names (first names) in England and Wales over the…

The family name distribution in Korea is investigated in comparison with previous studies in other countries. In Korea, both the family name and its birthplace, where the ancestor of the family originated, are commonly used to distinguish…

Although cumulative family name distributions in many countries exhibit power-law forms, there also exist counterexamples. The origin of different family name distributions across countries is discussed analytically in the framework of a…

The quantitative description of cultural evolution is a challenging task. The most difficult part of the problem is probably to find the appropriate measurable quantities that can make more quantitative such evasive concepts as, for…

We examine the problem of family size statistics (the number of individuals carrying the same surname, or the same DNA sequence) in a given size subsample of an exponentially growing population. We approach the problem from two directions.…

We consider a model for the evolution of the surnames distribution under a gender-equality measurement presently discussed in the Spanish parliament (the children take the surname of the father or the mother according to alphabetical…

We examine the complete dataset of baby name popularity collected by U.S. Social Security Administration for the last 131 years (1880-2010). The ranked baby name popularity can be fitted empirically by a piecewise function consisting of…

Goods, styles, ideologies are adopted by society through various mechanisms. In particular, adoption driven by innovation is extensively studied by marketing economics. Mathematical models are currently used to forecast the sales of…

We study the frequency distribution of family names. From a common data base, we count the number of people who share the same family name. This is the size of the family. We find that (i) the total number of different family names in a…

Surnames and nonrecombining alleles are inherited from a single parent in a highly similar way. A simple birth-death model with mutations can accurately describe this process. Exponentially growing and constant populations are investigated,…

All over the world, future parents are facing the task of finding a suitable given name for their child. This choice is influenced by different factors, such as the social context, language, cultural background and especially personal…

This article brings forward an estimation of the proportion of homonyms in large scale groups based on the distribution of first names and last names in a subset of these groups. The estimation is based on the generalization of the…

A stochastic model for the evolution of a growing population is proposed, in order to explain empirical power-law distributions in the frequency of family names as a function of the family size. Preliminary results show that the predicted…

This study deals with a fairly simply formulated problem -- how to estimate the number of people bearing the same full name in a large population. Estimation of name popularity can leverage personal name matching in databases and be of…

We study a modified version of the Naming Game, a recently introduced model which describes how shared vocabulary can emerge spontaneously in a population without any central control. In particular, we introduce a new mechanism that allows…

This paper studies the evolution of the distribution of opinions in a population of individuals in which there exist two distinct subgroups of highly-committed, well-connected opinion leaders endowed with a strong convincing power. Each…

Cultural traits such as words, names, decorative styles, and technical standards often assume arbitrary values and are thought to evolve neutrally. But neutral evolution cannot explain why some traits come and go in cycles of popularity…

Simulations of the Simmel effect are performed for agents in a scale-free social network. The social hierarchy of an agent is determined by the degree of her node. Particular features, once selected by a highly connected agent, became…