Names, Ethnicity and Populations

Ethnicity has become one of the most studied human dimensions in social and biomedical sciences over the past decade. However, there are important shortcomings in the means available to researchers to define and classify human group difference in past, as well as contemporary populations. Personal naming conventions usually adhere to unwritten social norms and customs that with time end up producing distinctive cultural, ethnic, linguistic, religious and geographic patterns in name distributions. This book follows the fascinating journey of personal names across the world, using maps and networks to identify alternative combinations of ethnic and geographic origins in contemporary population groups and neighbourhoods. This innovative approach allows population researchers to build more nuanced understandings about the history and immediate future of our contemporary multicultural societies, at a time in which the predominant political discourse and public debates are challenging increasing population diversity in the developed world.

Dr. Pablo Mateos is Associate Professor at the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico. He was Lecturer in Human Geography at the Department of Geography, University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom (2008-2012), where he currently holds an Honorary Lectureship. He obtained a PhD in Social Geography at the University of London (2007). At UCL he is a member of the Migration Research Unit (MRU), an associate of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM). He is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNI Level II) and a member/fellow of the Population Association of America (PAA), American Association of Geographers (AAG), Royal Geographical Society, Royal Statistical Society and British Society of Population Studies. He is a member of the UK Economic and Social Research (ESRC) Peer Review College and a member of the editorial board of the journal Human Biology. His research interests lie at the intersections of Social, Urban and Population Geography and his work focuses on investigating ethnicity, identity, migration, citizenship and urban segregation primarily in the UK, Spain, US, Mexico and Latin America. He has published over 40 journal articles and book chapters, amongst others; PLoS ONE, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs, Geoforum, Human Biology and Population Space and Place.