Surname Distribution in Galicia

This study used surnames collected in 12 municipalities of Sulcis, a historic-geographical region located in southwest Sardinia (Italy). An ecological index of similarity was drawn as the main analysis. The distribution of surnames was also used to determine the diversity of municipality populations by using another ecological index. Two municipalities have a high percentage of Genoese surnames and this element reflects a specific history and culture, different from other Sardinian localities. These peculiarities are evident in the topological representation, which graphically emphasizes the links between the populations studied. Two other municipalities can be distinguished from the remaining eight. Above all, historical, socioeconomic, cultural, and geographic considerations are useful in the appropriate interpretation of the results.

Etude de la distribution de 23 noms de famille en Angleterre et au Pays-de-Galles d'apres le bottin telephonique. Dans certains cas, cette distribution revele les migrations des siecles passes

We studied the population structure of South Korea by using the distributions of surnames for all 246 administrative regions. Every 4,177 surnames are distinguished by their bon-gwan which indicates the place of their family clans. Using Fisher’s Alpha, we found that the level of inbreeding increases as the distance from the capital Seoul increases. We introduced the Shannon index to measure the level of spatial diffusion for each surname population, and the geographical clusters based on similarities of the surname compositions among the regions show almost exact agreement with those at the administrative districts.

Al di là del loro interesse storiografico, gli studi genealogici stanno da tempo attirando l’interesse dei genetisti in quanto possono fornire supporto empirico o contribuire a falsificare modelli puramente matematici di dinamica delle popolazioni.
\nRipercorriamo brevemente la storia delle interazioni tra genealogia e genetica a partire dalla fine del XIX secolo, concentrandoci in particolare sugli studi sull’isonimia matrimoniale e sulla distribuzione e la scomparsa dei cognomi. Analizziamo criticamente i modelli teorici adottati indicando i loro limiti concettuali, che la storiografia ha permesso di individuare. 
\nAnalizziamo poi alcune recenti esperienze e proposte di ricerca, in particolare gli studi sulla ripetizione degli antenati (inbreeding) e quelli sull’antenato comune più recente (MRCA), effettuati in vivo esplorando quantitativamente il complesso, genealogicamente ben conosciuto, della nobiltà europea nell’età moderna.

Perhaps the most basic biological instincts of all creatures are to survive and to produce offspring. In ancient times, poor hygienic environment and occasional widespread epidemics obviously gave people strong reasons to worry about the possible extinction of their own lineage. But to transform such a worry into a mathematical problem, it is helpful if the upper class of the society, which has the ability and the leisure to think about the problem on an abstract level, also feels the possibility of such an extinction. Indeed, this was the case in eighteenth-century western Europe. The development of the theory of branching processes in fact started with the calculation of the probability of family surname extinction. Mode (1971) argued that one of the reasons for the decay of family names was that “physical comfort and intellectual capacity were necessarily accompanied by a diminution in fertility.” This statement, that parents choose to have fewer children because they want increase their enjoyment of life, seems to be a more suitable characterization of the argument of Becker’s (1991) contemporary household economics. Others, such as Chu and Lee (1994), argued that it was the scourges of war and famine that were responsible for the major rises of mortality in ancient history. Whatever the cause of lineage extinction, as a large proportion of family surnames continued to die out, Francis Galton (1873), one of the founders of the theory of branching processes, presented his concern with lineage extinction on an abstract level: The problem of family surname extinction concerns part (i) of problem 4001; part (ii) is about the distribution of surnames (types), which was the focus of chapter 4 of this book. Problem 4001 did not attract much attention until Agner Krarup Erlang became interested in this problem because his mother’s surname, Krarup, was about to become extinct. Erlang arrived at the solution below. First, we remove the restriction in problem 4001 that a man can have at most five sons, and let pk be the probability of having k surviving male children.

Whatʼs in a name?: Comment on “Surname distribution in population genetics and in statistical physics”

In my study, I examined the material of the National Tax Census of 1720 (Conscriptio Regnicolaris) of Vas County included in the database of the Atlas of Historical Surnames in Hungary (AHSH) from two approaches. On the one hand, by using the method of name analysis, I sought to reveal the distribution by origin on the basis of the contemporary surname etymons according to which the surnames in Vas County are divided into three categories: German, Hungarian and Slavic. The high representation of the two latter name etymon groups is clearly due to the double border region and the resulting increased inter-ethnic relations compared to the inland areas of the language area. The distribution of surname etymons between Kőszeg and the districts further complicates the picture. A greater number of Hungarian surnames are found in the northern (Kőszeg) and inland (Kemenesalja and Árokközi) districts of the county. In the town of Kőszeg, as well as in the district of Szombathely, which lies directly on the western border, the number of people with German surname etymons is dominant, as do the Slavs in the district of Tótság on the south-south-western edge, for understandable reasons. On the other hand, with the help of János N. Fodor's (2010) functional-semantic theoretical framework applied at the research on personal names in the Upper Tisza region, I examined the motivations for naming in the Hungarian-origin surname material of Vas County, by districts and in the case of Kőszeg. The results showed that Hungarian names account for about one third of the total family name stock (33.52%), and 92.61% of these names can be classified into one of the five motivation categories (individual attribute; relationship to people, groups of people; social role, status, situation; relationship to place; relationship to things, circumstances). At both county and district (and in the case of Kőszeg, urban) level, it is clear that the vast majority of all motivational options are distributed between the first four categories. This distribution is relatively even at county level, but is more nuanced at district and Kőszeg level. After this overview, I will briefly present the percentage distribution of ethnonymic surnames at county level and then at district (and Kőszeg) level. Concerning the distribution between the districts (and the city of Kőszeg), the percentage within this category is the highest in the Kőszeg district due to the peripheral location and the consequent greater occurance of interethnic relations. The Kőszeg district is followed by the Szombathely district, which is also peripheral, but lies further south; then by two inland districts, Kemenesalja and Árokköz; and then, interestingly, since it is also a peripheral district, by Tótsági. Finally, this ratio is the lowest in the town of Kőszeg.

Ágoston Berecz. <i>Empty Signs, Historical Imaginaries: The Entangled Nationalization of Names and Naming in a Late Habsburg Borderland</i>.

Background: Southern Italy and Sicily played a key role in the peopling history of the Mediterranean. While genetic research showed the remarkable homogeneity of these regions, surname-based studies instead suggested low population mobility, hence potential structuring.Aim: In order to better understand these different patterns, this study (1) thoroughly analysed the surname structure of Sicily and Southern Italy and (2) tested its relationships with a wide set of molecular markers.Subjects and methods: Surname data were collected from 1213 municipalities and compared to uniparental and autosomal genetic markers typed in ∼300 individuals from 8–10 populations. Surname analyses were performed using different multivariate methods, while comparisons with genetic data relied on correlation tests.Results: Surnames were clearly structured according to regional geographic patterns, which likely emerged because of recent isolation-by-distance-like population dynamics. In general, genetic markers, hinting at a pervasive homogeneity, did not correlate with surname distribution. However, long autosomal haplotypes (>5 cM) that compared to genotypic (SNPs) data identify more “recent” relatedness, showing a clear association with surname patterns.Conclusion: The apparent contradiction between surname structure and genetic homogeneity was resolved by figuring surnames as recent “ripples” deposited on a vast and ancient homogeneous genetic “surface”.

The surname is a cultural trait that is extremely useful for historical and linguistic studies and can effectively be used as a genetic marker. In many human populations the surname is inherited in the paternal lineage, and can therefore be considered a marker for the Y chromosome. In this study, surnames were recorded from the white pages of telephone directories in current use in Corsica in 1993. All surnames present in thirteen villages scattered over the whole island and covering the main historical regions were transcribed. Surname variability was found to be higher in coastal villages, and lower in more isolated communities. The isonymy detected among the thirteen villages allowed the calculation of kinship values, visualized in a tree showing two main clusters, one referring to the northern villages and one encompassing the villages of the south. The pattern reflects the administrative division of the island, with the exception of Vico, which belongs to the southern administrative region but is geographically close to the northern villages, and Ghisoni, which belongs to the northern district but is more similar to the village of Bastelica in the southern district. The data presented here show a structure in the surname distribution that is in substantial agreement with the geographical patterns. The kinship values are consistent with a moderated gene flow among villages producing a surname structure according to the geographic features of the territory.

From france to new france: Quebec family names, past and present

The interests of modern linguistics are turned today to the study of how the language functions in the real speech activity of an individual or a collective, a group United socially or territorially. As a native English speaker, D. Fowles in his works reflects and explicates a specific vision of the world inherent in the English linguistic and cultural community. One of the means of transferring the features of the worldview of his people D. Fowles is an allusion. The peculiarity of D. Fowles's discourse is characterized by the frequent use of this stylistic device, the specificity of which consists in referring to a particular event or object that is important for this linguistic and cultural community. Projecting the mention of a fact on the fabric of the text, allusion contributes to the fact that cultural information becomes an integral part of it. The monograph is devoted to the linguistic and cultural analysis of allusions aimed at the description of the projection and fragment of the cultural space of the English linguistic and cultural community. This publication contains the theoretical foundations of the linguistic and cultural approach to the study of linguistic units (in particular allusions), as well as their consistent analysis for the transmission of cultural and value information. Cultural and value information is recorded in the discourse with the help of culturological components (according to S. V. Ivanova), so that the discourse becomes culturologically marked. In the study of allusions, different types of allusions are distinguished from the point of view of their relevance to the text information: dominant and local. In turn, the latter of these have their gradation. For the analysis of D. Fowles's discourse, the concept of cultural marking, developed by S. V. Ivanova, the concept of cultural spheres, the linguistic-cultural code, which is a verbalized translator of various cultural codes, the classification of culture codes, developed by D. B. Gudkov and M. L. Kovshova, and V. V. Krasnykh was taken as a basis. The publication is intended for a wide range of specialists in the field of cultural studies, linguoculturology, intercultural communication, stylistics, literary studies, text interpretation.

An avid translator, the poet, novelist, essayist and journalist, Dezső Kosztolányi believed in linguistic relativism, the uniqueness of each language-created world view, and the impossibility of translation. Paradoxically, one of his main concerns was to express in fiction various encounters between individuals belonging to different linguistic and cultural communities, and to explore whether communication between them was at all possible. It is exactly this double bind—this status of finding oneself between two or more cultures and languages—that the Hungarian novelist explored in many of his works, particularly in his last fictional writings, the Esti Kornél cycles: Esti Kornél (1933) and Esti Kornél Kalandjai (The Adventures of Kornél Esti, 1936). Several of the Esti Kornél episodes are linguistic explorations of the encounter between “self” and “other,” when these two often belong to different cultural and linguistic communities. The result of estranging language during such encounters leads to a better understanding of language and the context that created it—just as, in translation, the loss and, therefore, the presence of the original’s linguistic form is most acutely felt and understood by the translator.

Urban historical and cultural communities are the embodiment of the city's heritage and cultural undertones. This paper Aims to sort out Chongqing's historical and cultural communities and selects a re presentative community, Jialingxi Village, for research, analyzes the subject spatial feelings and needs of residents in Jiaoxi Village through field research, combines the spatial syntax of convex space, integration degree, comprehensibility and the spatial data available were analyzed by combining the parameters of space syntax such as convex space, integration, comprehensibility and viewable area for internal and external space. The study shows that the comfort and pleasantness of the community space is poor, its external space has a high Degree of integration, the traffic is well developed, the pedestrian flow is dense, there are differences in the selection degrees of different entrances and exits, some of the internal paths have many turns, there is a low possibility of pedestrian flow through, the visibility of the main road is insufficient and the guidance is weak. At the end of the paper, a targeted community renewal strategy is proposed to provide ideas that can be used for the transformation of urban historical and cultural communities under the rural revitalization strategy.

Isonymic Relations in the Bolivia-Argentina Border Region.