So something interesting, that makes sense if you think about it (but you really don’t hear about it ever) is the loss of surnames over generations. In cultures where married couples take a single surname, children only inherit one parent’s surname, individuals don’t procreate and pass on their surname, etc, that surname falls out of use. While this isn’t a problem for a last name like Smith (in the USA), there’s a good chance if you’re the last holder of that surname, it’s never coming back (ignoring the ability to change your surname).

I wrote up a little program to simulate that. It’s pretty basic, only taking into account individuals producing two children who inherit one parent’s surname. This ignores a lot of common cases (single people, couples with 0-1 and 3+ children, divorce, multiple partners, etc, etc). But trying to implement most of these cases would cause smaller sample sizes to die off. So in the interest of ensuring a readable graph each time, I’ve ignored these cases.

Enjoy! It’s find to see what the graphs come up with. Some caution though, higher sample sizes on slower computers could cause the browser to freeze!

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