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Your Surname Tells How Rich You Are

Posted by samzenpus on from the money-makes-money dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Research (Pdf) shows that the descendants of people who in 1858 had 'rich' surnames such as Mandeville, Percy and Darcy, indicating they were descended from the French nobility, are still substantially wealthier in 2011 than those with traditionally 'poor' or artisanal surnames."

1 comment

  1. Paper not worth the bytes its PDF-ed in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This paper is chock-full of BIG mistakes. Obviously this author has not spent much time on reading any real history - just some sociology 101 thrown in with a couple of math formulas and a line graph to make it all look 'scientific'. What am I talking about? From a rapid scan:

    1. Repeated statements about English society not having class barriers through the centuries. Hello? Maybe less than other places in Europe, but class was class and you dared not cross certain lines.
    2. Orwell "Being incorrect" about British society being highly classed. Orwell lived in it, the author did not. Even in 1941 there was still a huge sense of the 'old order', even through it had somewhat weakened after WWI.
    3. Illegitimate children having the mother's name- yes; but that illegitimacy was "rare" - very, very wrong.

    Glazed over the rest as he was rambling anyway. I guess a PhD is in order here, right?