<p>Table with the number of baptisms by surnames and districts, before the plague epidemic

Pierre Darlu compiled baptism counts by surname and district before and after a plague epidemic, alongside a list of plague victims. The data spans 1689–1789 and focuses on the Bouches-du-Rhône department in France. It is a 3.3 MB Excel file published on figshare under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze surname frequency changes over time based on baptism counts before and after the plague.
• Study the demographic impact of the plague epidemic based on the list of victims.
• Compare regional population trends within Bouches-du-Rhône based on district-level data.
• Track the persistence of family names across centuries based on surname-specific baptism records.

Strengths

• Provides a clear temporal split for analysis: pre-plague (1689–1720) and post-plague (1721–1789).
• Focuses on a specific geographic region: the districts of Bouches-du-Rhône.
• File size is 3.3 MB, indicating a manageable dataset for analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to its focus on a single French department.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Time Range

1689–1789

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 17:29:21; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Bouches-du-Rhône, France