An Individual Level Method for Improved Estimation of Ethnic Characteristics

Abstract

This paper develops an improved method for estimating the ethnicity of individuals based on individual level pairings of given and family names. It builds upon previous research by using a global database of names from c. 1.7 billion living individuals, supplemented by individual level historical census data. In focusing upon Great Britain, these resources enable, respectively, greater precision in estimating probable global origins and better estimation of self-identification amongst long-established family groups such as the Irish Diaspora. We report on geographic issues in adjusting the weighting of groups that are systematically under- or over-predicted using other methods. Our individual level estimates are evaluated using both small area Great Britain census data for 2011 and individual level data for asylum seekers in Canada between 1995 and 2012. Our conclusions assess the value of such estimates in the conduct of social equity audits and in depicting the social mobility outcomes of residential mobility and migration across Great Britain.

The socio-colonial history of Surinamese surnames applied to a validated surname list to identify ancestry in health research

“…For example, the majority of Amsterdam South East's population is of African-Surinamese origin (Statistics Amsterdam, https://www.amsterdam.nl/ois/), and this high probability should be sufficient to identify persons of African-Surinamese origin in this region based on the Surname List. Aside from geocoding, future analysis of individual-level pairings of given and family names may aid in the estimation of ethnicity (Lan and Longley, 2023), in particular for the distinction between African Dutch of Surinamese ancestry and European Dutch, as the former might carry existing Dutch surnames.…”

Geography, ethnicity, genealogy and inter‐generational social inequality in Great Britain

“…2.2 | Characterising Britain's long-established and immigrant populations using namesbased classification Individuals' forename -surname pairings have been used successfully to infer the probable cultural, ethnic, and linguistic origins and affinities (Mateos et al, 2011), as well as the present-day country in which the name is most likely to occur (Lan & Longley, 2022). This approach has been successfully deployed in many social, medical and management science equality audits (e.g., Easton & Pryce, 2019;Lan et al, 2021;Nathan, 2015;Thomas et al, 2021).…”

“…Uncertainty regarding the classification of surnames into ethnic groups is an important issue, but has been mitigated in studies which have compared estimated ethnicities with the categories with which survey respondents self‐identify (Kandt & Longley, 2018). Here we use Lan and Longley's (2022) names classification because it was developed to bring particular focus to Britain's immigrant groups. This makes it possible not only to identify the most probable country of origin of present‐day surname bearers, but also to determine whether their forbears were present in significant numbers in 1851.…”

“…2.4 | Georeferencing the origins of long-established white British (WBR) family groups Cheshire and Longley (2012) demonstrate that most long-established British family names (aside from relatively few common names such as Smith, Brown, and Williams) have discernible regional or even local origins, albeit that singular 'heartlands' are by no means universal. Detection of origins may also be obfuscated by the effects of rural -urban migration that had already occurred prior to the first available (Lan & Longley, 2022) digital census data. Van Dijk and Longley (2020) nevertheless establish that most rural White British bearers of regionally concentrated surnames reside in the environs of where the surnames originated.…”