Fitting a Distribution for Length of Last Names in a Mixed African Community in Ghana

by Open Science Repository Mathematics
(October 2013)

Abstract

The uniqueness of surnames makes it curious for continuous studies to be made on them. In Ghana surnames are dominantly inherited from the male side except some few ethnic groups that acquire the surname of the mother. The pronunciation and spelling of these surnames are complex because of their length. It is by this reason that designers of computer database programmes may allocate far in excess of needed scarce computer memory for the storage of a surname. The study postulates a probability model that nearly fits the number of characters contained in a surname for over 3263 sampled students from Methodist University College Ghana. The distributions are the Loggamma and the Dagum distributions. Their descriptive properties are very close to the actual values of the length of surnames in the study area.

Keywords: surname, character, distribution.

Full text

Fitting a Distribution for Length of Last Names in a Mixed African Community in Ghana