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Business empires in Australia

Key points:

  • - "Michael" is one of the most common names found in the ABN register.
  • - "Consulting" businesses dominates the North Shore and Eastern Suburbs in Sydney, while "transport" businesses claim large areas in Western Sydney.
  • - Non-Anglo names, such as "Nguyen" and "Singh" are often associated with transport, international trading, and property businesses.

The maps

The data behind these maps come from ABN (Australian Business Number) data, the ABN Bulk Extract. This data contains publicly available information supplied by businesses when they register for an ABN.

Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) we identified names of people and industry sectors within the business names in the ABN dataset. For the businesses in each postcode area, we identified the most frequent names and industry sectors, and mapped their geographical range. Areas that share a most frequent word were merged. The result manifested as collections of small 'empires' whose borders are defined by industry sector and ownership profile.

The maps aim to demonstrate the history of immigration, through the lens of both the business owner's country of origin (inferred by name) and their main business activity. These maps are useful for showing large scale patterns - large swathes of land forming empires of 'transport' for example, or owned by people with the surname 'Kim' (Probably different people, but likely to share cultural background). For individual locations, the maps only show the most common word, the diversity of the full set of identified words is omitted by design. The caveat is that there may be very little difference in count between the first and second highest ranking words for an area.

Most common words in registered business Names (capital cities)


Brisbane

Map of most common business owner names in Brisbane Map of most common business sectors in Brisbane


Sydney

Map of most common business owner names in Sydney Map of most common business sectors in Sydney


Canberra

Map of most common business owner names in Canberra Map of most common business sectors in Canberra


Melbourne

Map of most common business owner names in Melbourne Map of most common business sectors in Melbourne


Hobart

Map of most common business owner names in Hobart Map of most common business sectors in Hobart


Adelaide

Map of most common business owner names in Adelaide Map of most common business sectors in Adelaide


Perth

Map of most common business owner names in Perth Map of most common business sectors in Perth


Darwin

Map of most common business owner names in Darwin Map of most common business sectors in Darwin

Explore most common words in business names (Australia)

Map of most common business owner names in Australia Map of most common business sectors in Australia

Data

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