Power-law distribution of family names in Japanese societies

We study the frequency distribution of family names. From a common data bas e, we count the number of people who share the same family name. This is th e size of the family. We find that (i) the total number of different family names in a society scales as a power law of the population, (ii) the total number of family names of the same size decreases as the size increases wi th a power law and (iii) the relation between size and rank of a family nam e also shows a power law. These scaling properties are found to be consiste nt for five different regional communities in Japan. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scie nce B.V. All rights reserved.