Socio-economical analysis of Italy: The case of hagiotoponym cities

Abstract

This paper pursues the scopes of joining the economical characteristics of Italian cities with a relevant sociological aspect: the cult of the catholic Saints. Indeed, more than in other Countries, a high percentage of Italian cities has a toponym coming from the name of specific Saints (hagiotoponym). The assessment of the historical origin of each hagiotoponym is out of the scopes of the present paper, but the link with the religious sense of Italians seems to be clear. The statistical analysis of the economic contributions that each hagiotoponym city provides to the Italian GDP is here performed. Such an analysis is also based on the comparison with the overall Italian data, and it is carried out through the computation of the Theil, Gini and Herfindahl-Hirschman indices.