Surnames in Albania: A Study of the Population of Albania through Isonymy

Abstract

SummaryIn order to describe the isonymic structure of Albania, the distribution of 3,068,447 surnames was studied in the 12 prefectures and their administrative subdivisions: the 36 districts and 321 communes. The number of different surnames found was 37,184. Effective surname number for the entire country was 1327, the average for prefectures was 653.3 ± 84.3, for districts 365.9 ± 42.0 and for communes 122.6 ± 8.7. These values display a variation of inbreeding between administrative levels in the Albanian population, which can be attributed to the previously published "Prefecture effect".Matrices of isonymic distances between units within administrative levels were tested for correlation with geographic distances. The correlations were highest for prefectures (r = 0.71 ± 0.06 for Euclidean distance) and lowest for communes (r = 0.37 ± 0.011 for Nei's distance).The multivariate analyses (Principal component analysis and Multidimensional Scaling) of prefectures identify three main clusters, one toward the North, the second in Central Albania, and the third in the South. This pattern is consistent with important subclusters from districts and communes, which point out that the country may have been colonised by diffusion of groups in the North-South direction, and from Macedonia in the East, over a pre-existing Illiryan population.

Surnames in Honduras: A Study of the Population of Honduras through Isonymy

“…Therefore, the model is very strong and, possibly due to the large number of pairwise distances available to us, it is also applicable to a geographic structure which, like Honduras, is elongated from east to west, but which is poorly linear. A similar agreement was observed in Albania (Mikerezi et al, 2013). In Figure 5, we plot the observed decay of kinship (Obs Kinship), and the decay obtained from its exponential regression on all geographic distances (Exp Kinship).…”

Secular trends in the relationship between surnames in a population: Study of a border town

“…Recent publications have focused on populations from all continents: Küffer and Colantonio (2011), Lucchetti et al (2011), Liu et al (2012), Niederstätter et al (2012, Alsmadi et al (2013), Asghar et al (2013), Mikerezi et al (2013), andCapocasa et al (2014). Taking advantage of the availability of digital databases, studies have appeared on the subject of migration, the correspondence between surnames and chromosome Y genetic markers, the evolution of populations and the dynamics of disordered systems (Rossi, 2013).…”

The Geography as a Regulator of Genetic Flow and Genetic Structure in Andorra

“…The data used are the intensity of the interchanges between population nuclei in the Principality of Andorra. This system used in taxonomic studies of human populations, as well as other multi-variant methods, adapts easily to data employed in bio-demographic studies (Smith & Hudson, 1984;Fuster, 1985;Pollitzer et al, 1988;Luchetti & Soliani, 1989;Calafell & Hernández, 1993;Esparza et al, 2006;Mikerezi et al, 2013). Finally, distances matrixes have been represented by neighbor-joining representation (Saitou & Nei, 1987;Felsenstein, 1989;Li & Graur, 1991).…”