  The study of surnames as both linguistic and geographical markers of the past
has proven valuable in several research fields spanning from biology and
genetics to demography and social mobility. This article builds upon the
existing literature to conceive and develop a surname origin classifier based
on a data-driven typology. This enables us to explore a methodology to describe
large-scale estimates of the relative diversity of social groups, especially
when such data is scarcely available. We subsequently analyze the
representativeness of surname origins for 15 socio-professional groups in
France.
