title: Surname distribution in population genetics and in statistical physics.
abstract: Surnames tend to behave like neutral genes, and their distribution has attracted a growing attention from genetists and physicists. We review the century-long history of surname studies and discuss the most recent developments. Isonymy has been regarded as a tool for the measurement of consanguinity of individuals and populations and has been applied to the analysis of migrations. The analogy between patrilineal surname transmission and the propagation of Y chromosomes has been exploited for the genetic characterization of families, communities and control groups. Surname distribution is the result of a stochastic dynamics, which has been studied either as a Yule process or as a branching phenomenon: both approaches predict the asymptotic power-law behavior which has been observed in many empirical researches. Models of neutral evolution based on the theory of disordered systems have suggested the application of field-theoretical techniques, and in particular the Renormalization Group, to describe the dynamics leading to scale-invariant distributions and to compute the related (critical) exponents.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università di Pisa and I.N.F.N., Sezione di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, I-56127 Pisa, Italy. Electronic address: Paolo.Rossi@df.unipi.it.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rossi
mesh_terms: D041322:Chromosomes, Human, Y / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005828:Genetics, Population / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009275:Names; D010825:Physics / Q000379:methods*; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Consanguinity; Isonymy; Renormalization Group; Surname distribution; Y chromosome; Yule process