Author: Namsor

NamSor™ is a European designer of name recognition software. Our mission is to help make sense of the Big Data and understand international flows of money, ideas and people. Our specialized data mining software recognizes the linguistic or cultural origin of personal names in any alphabet / language, with fine grain and high accuracy. Names are meaningful : we use sociolinguistics to extract their semantics and deliver actionable intelligence.
Photo by Kelsey Knight on Unsplash
Machine Learning

Namsor and Mixity join forces to measure diversity within organizations in France

Mixity has partnered with Namsor to enable organizations to measure the perceived ethnic diversity of their employees using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This makes it possible to identify and resolve inequalities linked to cultural and ethnic origins. According to French statistical office (INSEE), these inequalities are manifested by higher unemployment rates, less durable and qualified jobs and lower remuneration for immigrant populations.

FDI Manget is NamSor offering for Foreign Direct Investment promotion since 2014.
FDI Magnet / General

ChatGPT on Diaspora & FDI best practices

A country can use its diaspora, or the group of people who have emigrated from the country and settled in other parts of the world, to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) by leveraging their connections, resources, and knowledge. Diaspora mapping tools like NamSor Origin can help to better target diasporas for investment promotion and growing remittances by providing detailed information on the demographics and characteristics of a country’s diaspora population.

General

French court admits onomastic proof of discrimination

The Cour de Cassation is the highest court of law in France. A judgment of the Court of Cassation of December 14, 2022 recognizes patronymic analysis – statistics on the ethno-cultural origin of names – as ex post proof of discrimination in hiring.

"societal pressures encourage women to be more uncertain than their male counterparts" Illustration by DALL-E
Gender / General / Machine Learning

Do societal pressures encourage women to be more uncertain than their male counterparts?

ChatGPT is impressive … it works like magic. But how robust are its answers, compared to recent academic results? ChatGPT can write about the Neo-Assyrian period, but what if a major archeological discovery were made that would change everything we know about this period. How long would it take for ChatGPT to adjust its knowledge?
We’ve prompted ChatGPT with some of the research questions of the paper “Editing a Woman’s Voice” (2022, Anna M. Costello, Ekaterina Fedorova, Zhijing Jin, and Rada Mihalcea).

IOM Diaspora Mapping Toolkit Pagecover
Machine Learning

IOM Diaspora Mapping Toolkit : big data and onomastics

The IOM Diaspora Mapping Toolkit analyses pros & cons for the use of big data and onomastics for Diaspora Mapping. It is based on field experience learned from several project conducted by The International Organization for Migration (IOM) using NamSor technology. One particular case study cited in the report is Skills Mapping Through Big Data: A case study of Armenian diaspora in the United States of America and France

Diaspora networks accross the world (DALL-E)
Machine Learning

What is a diaspora (according to ChatGPT)

At NamSor, since 2012, we’ve helped countries reconnect with their diaspora, using our advanced AI to recognize personal names with high accuracy, and to produce new disaggregated information. It took us a while to understand the concept of “diaspora”, how they affect foreign direct investment, remittances, brain-gain vs. brain-drain, the travel industry, real estate … We’ve asked ChatGPT “what is a diaspora”.

"The Social Science Research Network" by DALL-E
General / Machine Learning

Top 20 papers using or citing NamSor in SSRN

Top 20 papers in The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) using or citing NamSor name classification software. SSRN is a high impact journal (top 14% of journals). Some papers used NamSor to infer the gender of a personal name, some other papers to supplement subject data with race / ethnicity, or cultural heritage and ethnic origin.

Le concours externe des IRA : une réussite différenciée selon l’âge, le sexe, le niveau de diplôme et l’origine supposée des candidats 8 NOVEMBRE 2022 AUTRES PUBLICATIONS ÉMILIE ARNOULT PIERRE VILLEDIEU MARIE PREVOT (DGAFP)
General

New study on discrimination in French public sector

As France doesn’t collect ethnic statistics, organizations in the public and private sector need to work around the lack of data to analyze potential discriminations.

DARES, the directorate of the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Integration which produces analyses, studies and statistics on the themes of work, employment, vocational training and social dialogue has used NamSor to prepare a study on competitive exams in the public sector.

A portrait of Mariam KABORE #thisnamedpersondoesnotexist #DALLE
General / Machine Learning

This Mariam KABORE does not exist

Two weeks ago, we generated several portraits using DALL-E of hypothetical Fatimata SWADOGO, a Bukinabé name shared by hundreds of people in Burkina Faso, mostly in the Centre-Nord, Nord regions of the country. Today, we present some new portraits generated from personal names with the tag #thisnamedpersondoesnotexist – and we feature a “classic fail” of AI software.

“A conference in interdisciplinary research with diverse women and men researchers.” DALL-E
Gender

New scientific paper using/citing NamSor

Do women undertake interdisciplinary research more than men, and do self-citations bias observed differences? A paper published in Quantitative Science Studies (2022), authored by Henrique Pinheiro, Matt Durning, David Campbell. 2022 has seen the number of scientific articles using or citing NamSor nearly double. Announcement : new blog in Spanish language.