Table of contents
Surnames of Central Asia (merged region)

Surname frequency wordclouds for Central Asia, by administrative unit. Political boundaries are shown according to their “de facto” status. Data came from Forebears.io.
Hub: Project “Surnames of the World”.
Maps
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
FAQ
FAQClick or tap to open section
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The bigger the "word" size, the more common the respective surname is . Databases of global surnames aggregated by admin units were used to access raw data on surname frequencies. Then, surnames were allocated within their respective admin units to create easier-to-read visuals in the form of "word clouds" (aka "tag clouds"). Below, (Fig. 1.1), one can see an interactive example with a random list of strings.
Simplified building taxonomy of selected cities (animation)

- Data Source & Dataset Description
- Data Format & Columns
- References & Sources
💬 How-to: Read this wordcloud mapsClick or tap to open section
🧮 Methodology detailsClick or tap to open section
🛠️ Technical detailsClick or tap to open section
📋 Next steps and TODOClick or tap to open section
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Fig. 3.1 Processing graph (DAG).
Python is a programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more effectively.
GeoPandas is an open source project to make working with geospatial data in Python easier. It extends pandas with spatial operations using shapely, pyogrio, and matplotlib.
See: geopandas website
Hamilton is a general-purpose framework to write dataflows using regular Python functions. Each function defines a transformation and its dependencies.
See: hamiltondagworks
Fig. 3.2 High-level overview of pipeline, illustrated.

Some description about "raster vs vector" formats, georeferencing in general and current geo-referencing for vector images.
Raster files are images built from pixels - tiny color squares that form detailed images. More pixels = higher quality.
Vector files use mathematical equations (lines and curves), so they scale without losing quality.
Georeferencing (or georegistration) is the process of aligning spatial data (raster or vector) to real-world coordinates.
See:
Georeferencing wiki
References
- Forebears article (archived): “Accuracy of Surname Statistics on Forebears”
- Naming customs: FamilySearch Europe
Media presence
No external mentions listed.
How to cite this work
For human-readable attribution, please cite this work as:
Surnames of Central Asia (2024), Vitaliy Yevtushenko (Witold's Data Consulting). https://witold1.github.io/portfolio/blog/project-surnames/viz-surnames-central-asia/.BibTeX
@misc{witold_blog_project-surnamesviz-surnames-central-asia,
author = {Vitaliy Yevtushenko},
title = {{Surnames of Central Asia}},
year = {2024},
url = {https://witold1.github.io/portfolio/blog/project-surnames/viz-surnames-central-asia/},
}