Greg Clark gave a talk here Thursday, and presented data showing that in the long run, England has no social classes! When English surnames were first created, they marked the status of folks. The village smith, for example, was called “Smith.” But by now, those rich and poor surnames are totally mixed – a surname tells you little about someone’s status. For example, this table describes a sample of once-rich names with especially low rates of mistaken names changes:
No English Gene Classes
No English Gene Classes
No English Gene Classes
Greg Clark gave a talk here Thursday, and presented data showing that in the long run, England has no social classes! When English surnames were first created, they marked the status of folks. The village smith, for example, was called “Smith.” But by now, those rich and poor surnames are totally mixed – a surname tells you little about someone’s status. For example, this table describes a sample of once-rich names with especially low rates of mistaken names changes:
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