The Ten Thousand Kims

• In the Korean culture the family members are recorded in special familybooks. This makes it possible to follow the distribution of Korean familynames far back in history. It is here shown that these name distributionsare well described by a simple null model, the random group formation (RGF)model. This model makes it possible to predict how the name distributionschange and these predictions are shown to be borne out. In particular, theRGF model predicts that, for married women entering a collection of familybooks in a certain year, the occurrence of the most common family name``Kim'' should be directly proportional the total number of married womenwith the same proportionality constant for all the years. This prediction isalso borne out to high degree. We speculate that it reflects some inherentsocial stability in the Korean culture. In addition, we obtain an estimate ofthe total population of the Korean culture down to year 500 AD, based on theRGF model and find about ten thousand Kims.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Annan fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Other Physics Topics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)