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The Surname Space of the Czech Republic: Examining Population Structure by Network Analysis of Spatial Co-Occurrence of Surnames
- Source :
- PLoS ONE, Vol 7, Iss 10, p e48568 (2012), PLoS ONE
- Publication Year :
- 2012
- Publisher :
- Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2012.
-
Abstract
- In the majority of countries, surnames represent a ubiquitous cultural attribute inherited from an individual's ancestors and predominantly only altered through marriage. This paper utilises an innovative method, taken from economics, to offer unprecedented insights into the "surname space" of the Czech Republic. We construct this space as a network based on the pairwise probabilities of co-occurrence of surnames and find that the network representation has clear parallels with various ethno-cultural boundaries in the country. Our inductive approach therefore formalizes a simple assumption that the more frequently the bearers of two surnames concentrate in the same locations the higher the probability that these two surnames can be related (considering ethno-cultural relatedness, common co-ancestry or genetic relatedness, or some other type of relatedness). Using the Czech Republic as a case study this paper offers a fresh perspective on surnames as a quantitative data source and provides a methodology that can be easily incorporated within wider cultural, ethnic, geographic and population genetics studies already utilizing surnames.
- Subjects :
- Male
Czech
Science
Population Dynamics
Culture
Ethnic group
Population Modeling
Space (commercial competition)
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Human Geography
White People
Sociology
Genetics
Humans
Names
Biology
Parallels
Czech Republic
Spatial Analysis
Multidisciplinary
Population Biology
Geography
Population size
Co-occurrence
Computational Biology
Human Genetics
Cultural Geography
language.human_language
Genealogy
Genetics, Population
Social Networks
Settlement Patterns
language
Medicine
Female
Pairwise comparison
Construct (philosophy)
Research Article
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 7
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....38fd7ea9f4e9557b45b11d804cfa28c9