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Power-law distribution of family names in Japanese societies

Author

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  • Miyazima, Sasuke
  • Lee, Youngki
  • Nagamine, Tomomasa
  • Miyajima, Hiroaki

Abstract

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 society scales as a power law of the population, (ii) the total number of family names of the same size decreases as the size increases with a power law and (iii) the relation between size and rank of a family name also shows a power law. These scaling properties are found to be consistent for five different regional communities in Japan.

Suggested Citation

  • Miyazima, Sasuke & Lee, Youngki & Nagamine, Tomomasa & Miyajima, Hiroaki, 2000. "Power-law distribution of family names in Japanese societies," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 278(1), pages 282-288.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:278:y:2000:i:1:p:282-288
    DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(99)00546-4
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    Cited by:

    1. Beare, Brendan K & Toda, Alexis Akira, 2020. "On the emergence of a power law in the distribution of COVID-19 cases," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt9k5027d0, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    2. Concas, Giulio & Marchesi, Michele & Pinna, Sandro & Serra, Nicola, 2006. "On the suitability of Yule process to stochastically model some properties of object-oriented systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 370(2), pages 817-831.
    3. Zhang, Jiang & Yu, Tongkui, 2010. "Allometric scaling of countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4887-4896.
    4. Ferreira, G.D. & Viswanathan, G.M. & da Silva, L.R. & Herrmann, H.J., 2018. "Surname complex network for Brazil and Portugal," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 499(C), pages 198-207.
    5. Asif, Muhammad & Hussain, Zawar & Asghar, Zahid & Hussain, Muhammad Irfan & Raftab, Mariya & Shah, Said Farooq & Khan, Akbar Ali, 2021. "A statistical evidence of power law distribution in the upper tail of world billionaires’ data 2010–20," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 581(C).
    6. De Luca, Andrea & Rossi, Paolo, 2009. "Renormalization group evaluation of exponents in family name distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(17), pages 3609-3614.
    7. Wang, Jian & Song, Weiguo & Zheng, Hongyang & Telesca, Luciano, 2010. "Temporal scaling behavior of human-caused fires and their connection to relative humidity of the atmosphere," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 85-89.

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