Personal names encode orthographic signatures shaped by linguistic history and cultural contact. Using a large-scale dataset of 2.29 million notable individuals assigned to 19 geographic subregions, we show that letter frequency distributions in names differ significantly by region (chi-square (χ²) test, p-value < 10⁻³⁰⁰). Terminal letter positions exhibit stronger geographic signal than initial positions (Cramér's V = 0.125 vs. 0.083). Hierarchical clustering of pairwise χ² statistics recovers culturally coherent groupings, including a European–North American–Oceanic cluster and a Levant–Arabian Peninsula–North African cluster, consistent with known linguistic genealogies. A recursive linear influence model applied to decade-level naming vectors identifies asymmetric patterns of cultural transmission: European naming conventions show strong outward influence into the Americas and Oceania, while East Asian naming systems exhibit high self-retention and limited external influence. These results demonstrate that orthographic patterns in personal names preserve detectable traces of historical contact, colonisation, and linguistic divergence.
Mukherjee et al. (2025) studied this question.