Naim Bro: “En Vitacura el apellido más común es González, pero proporcionalmente hay más en Maipú”

Surnames not only reflect family origins but also social segregation in Greater Santiago, according to one of the conclusions of the study entitled “Surname Affinity in Santiago, Chile: A Network-Based Approach Revealing Urban Segregation.” Specifically, the study analyzed more than 3.7 million voter registration records and identified that the traditional elite concentrates their surnames and social networks in the northeastern sector of the capital, while communities with predominantly Mapuche surnames are clustered in northwestern and southern areas, associated with lower socioeconomic levels. On #SinPretexto, Naim Bro, an academic at the School of Government of the Adolfo Ibáñez University and one of the lead researchers, stated that “we found four clusters in Santiago’s neighborhoods: there’s the upper-class neighborhood and the rest of the city, which is not entirely homogeneous. There’s downtown Santiago, the entire periphery, and the neighborhoods with a high presence of Mapuche surnames. The city is divided into four.” Bro added that, indeed, some surnames are repeated throughout the city: “In Vitacura, the most common surname is González, but proportionally, there are more Gonzálezes in Maipú than in Vitacura.” However, he pointed out that in the so-called “upper-class neighborhood” there is a concentration of surnames “that one might call wine-related, from the Castilian-Basque aristocracy: Larraín, Errázuriz, Vial, García Huidobro; but also rare or uncommon surnames.”