Abstract
This paper analyzes some economic and demographic features of Italians living in cities containing a Saint name in their appellation (hagiotoponyms). Demographic data come from the surveys done in the 15th (2011) Italian Census, while the economic wealth of such cities is explored through their recent (2007–2011) aggregated tax income (ATI). This cultural problem is treated from various points of view. First, the exact list of hagiotoponyms is obtained through linguistic and religiosity criteria. Next, it is examined how such cities are distributed in the Italian regions. Demographic and economic perspectives are also offered at the Saint level, i.e. calculating the cumulated values of the number of inhabitants and the ATI, “per Saint”, as well as the corresponding relative values taking into account the Saint popularity. On one hand, frequency-size plots and cumulative distribution function plots, and on the other hand, scatter plots and rank-size plots between the various quantities are shown and discussed in order to find the importance of correlations between the variables. It is concluded that rank–rank correlations point to a strong Saint effect, which explains what actually Saint-based toponyms imply in terms of comparing economic and demographic data.
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Notes
Through \(medievalist.net\).
The tables were either 637 or 639 long items, depending whether we considered real cities or hagiotoponyms
For completeness, note that the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm (see Levenberg 1944; Marquardt 1963; Lourakis 2011) has been used for the fitting procedure of the data to the mentioned non-linear functions. The error characteristics from the fit regressions, i.e. \(\chi ^2\), d, the number of degrees of freedom, the p value, beside the \(R^2\) regression coefficient, have been calculated, but are not shown for space saving. It has been observed that in all cases the p value is lower than \(10^{-6}\).
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Acknowledgments
This paper is part of scientific activities in COST Action IS1104, “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”. The authors are grateful to Dr. Eleonora Di Cristofaro and Dr. Antonio Caputo for helpful suggestions. All remaining errors are ours.
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Ausloos, M., Cerqueti, R. Religion-based urbanization process in Italy: statistical evidence from demographic and economic data. Qual Quant 50, 1539–1565 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0220-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0220-2