Surname Birth Trends Before and After the 1720 Plague

Pierre Darlu's dataset on figshare tracks the distribution of 60 surnames and their variants. It contains counts of births per surname for two periods: before the plague (1689–1720) and after (1721–1789). The data includes annualized figures, differences, and ratios between the periods, and notes surnames associated with plague deaths.

Use Cases

• Analyze surname frequency trends based on annual birth counts before and after a plague.
• Compare demographic resilience of surnames based on the ratio of births between two periods.
• Identify surnames associated with plague mortality based on the 'p' indicator mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data covers a specific 100-year time range (1689–1789) split into pre- and post-plague periods.
• Includes variant spellings of surnames, which likely improves name matching accuracy.
• Provides derived metrics like annualized counts, differences, and ratios for comparative analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is very small (21.5 KB), indicating limited scope.

Provenance

Source

Pierre Darlu

Time Range

1689–1789

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 17:29:31; freshness should be verified.