Complex Numbers

In The Name Of Name

One thing I find interesting is the origin of words. A subset of that is the origin of names.

Fascinating Map Reveals the Most Common Surnames in Every Country  

One can look at that map and find some notable patterns -- how, for instance, Smith seems to be the most popular name in so many Anglophone countries. Or that, although there are several different popular surnames in different Spanish-speaking countries, most of them seem to be ancestral.

Sorry, you'll have to go to the link to know what I'm talking about. I'm not going through the process to be able to embed the maps here.

The most intriguing thing to me isn't the names themselves, though. I mean, I'm sure you already knew the abundance of Smith here in the US, and that Nguyen is predominant in Vietnam. No, the bit I like is the categories:

Surnames generally fall into 1 of 5 categories: toponymic (location-based), occupational, personal descriptor, patronymic (from the name of a father or ancestor), and names that signify patronage.

What surprised me is that the only place where occupational names reign supreme is Europe and some of its former colonies (US, NZ, etc.) It's entirely missing from the map in Asia, South America, and Africa.

Which is not to say that those countries don't have occupational names, but it's not represented in the countries' most numerous names.

This might be saying something profound about what different cultures choose to honor by taking names -- occupation for English speakers, ancestry for most others -- or maybe it doesn't. But it does track with how we here in the US tend to define ourselves by our occupations, while other cultures identify more as a part of a family or clan.

But I may be reading too much into this; I don't know. Names can get popular through fertility, too -- someone who has lots of descendants who share their name. There may be other things to be gleaned from the maps; feel free to let me know if you notice anything.