Cultural evolution: the case of babies’ first names

Xi, Ning; Zhang, Zi-Ke; Zhang, Yi-Cheng; Ge, Zehui; She, Li; Zhang, Kui

doi:10.1016/j.physa.2014.03.042

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Journal article

Cultural evolution: the case of babies’ first names

Xi, Ning Research Center for Complex Systems Science, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology - Shanghai, China
Zhang, Zi-Ke College of Communication Engineering, Chongqing University - Chongqing, China - Alibaba Research Center for Complexity Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University - Hangzhou, China
Zhang, Yi-Cheng Research Center for Complex Systems Science, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology - Shanghai, China - Alibaba Research Center for Complexity Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University - Hangzhou, China - Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Ge, Zehui Dongling School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China
She, Li Alibaba Research Center for Complexity Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University - Hangzhou, China
Zhang, Kui College of Communication Engineering, Chongqing University - Chongqing, China

15.07.2014

Published in:

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. - 2014, vol. 406, p. 139–144

English In social sciences, there is currently rare consensus on the underlying mechanism for cultural evolution, partially due to lack of suitable data. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for such researches. In this paper, we employ the historical data on baby names from the United States to investigate the evolutionary process of culture, in particular focusing on how inequality among baby names changes over time. Then we propose a stochastic model where individual choice is determined by both individual preference and social influence, and show that the decrease in the strength of social influence can account for all the observed empirical features. Therefore, we claim that the weakening of social influence drives cultural evolution.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences et de médecine

Department

Département de Physique

Language