The Distribution of Surnames in Xiantao City through Isonymy

Abstract

The population migration in Hubei Province was frequent in history, accompanied by the migration of surnames, so it is important to study their population surnames. We take Xiantao City as an example to explore the isonymic structure of small and medium-sized cities in Hubei. The surname distributions of 223 327 residents registered in 2013 were analyzed in 5 towns and 105 villages of Xiantao. The number of different surnames found was 422. As for surnames, the $\alpha $-value reflects the influence of ethnic composition on the abundance of surnames. The correlation between the isonymic distance and the geographic distance between villages was calculated and indicated that Euclidean distance was weakly correlated with the geographic distance ($r=$0.177$\pm$ 0.012), and the isonymic distance increased with the geographical distance. Furthermore, the dendrogram and PCA built from the matrix of Euclidean distances between villages identified a main surname differentiation between the urban and rural areas.

Keywords

• |xiantao city|surname distribution|isonymy|isolation by distance|urban and rural areas