Rethnicity: Predicting Ethnicity from Names

Abstract

In this study, a new R package, \texttt{rethnicity} is provided for predicting ethnicity based on names. The Bidirectional LSTM and Florida Voter Registration were used as the model and training data, respectively. Special care was given for the accuracy of minority groups, by adjusting the imbalance in the dataset. The models were trained and exported to C++ and then integrated with R using Rcpp. Additionally, the availability, accuracy, and performance of the package were compared with other solutions.