Ethnic Structure in Global Naming Networks

In today’s multicultural society, there is a growing need to understand the detailed composition of different ethnic groups and the interactions between them. These large-scale group dynamics emerge from the aggregation of millions of ethnic self-identifications of individuals. Mateos et al. (2011) and others have begun to demonstrate the extent to which cultural, ethnic and linguistic (CEL) assignments can be inferred using ‘naming networks’ of forename-surname pairs of any population. In further developing this work, we construct a global personal naming network from over 300 million name records from 23 countries. We use this to detect distinct social and ethno-cultural clusters in the network using Louvain community detection algorithm, and examine the interactions between them by inspecting the network structure. The results reveal the degree of isolation, integration or overlap between different human populations, and hence provide new insights into studies on migration, identity, integration or social interaction around the world.