Speaker: Sihan Chen (PI: Ted Gibson)

Title: Cross-Cultural Structures Of Personal Name Systems Reflect General Communicative Principles

Abstract: The structure of personal names differs widely across cultures. We present an information-theoretic analysis of name systems that shows how the scope of this variation is far more constrained than it might appear. The analysis identifies two constraints personal-name codes must satisfy: encoding large numbers of identities; and ensuring these encodings are usable. It reveals how historically, the world’s languages satisfied these constraints using similar, near-optimal name codes that combined of small sets of name-specific words with existing vocabulary items, enabling unlimited numbers of identifiers to be created without concomitant increases in vocabulary sizes, and explains why cross-cultural differences in the repurposing of parts of names into hereditary fixed-patronyms have systematically changed these systems. Finally, it shows how when combined with the different ways legislatures have implemented fixed-patronyms, the failure to understand the information structure of name codes can result in systematic bias against individuals with names from non-Western cultures.

Location: 46-3310

Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/3473065359