Member News

Registration and Schedule: 2023 ANS Conference, Online, January 20-22, 2023

The schedule is now available for the 2023 ANS Conference!

Registration is now open. The ANS conference will take place online, on Zoom, from January 20-22, 2023. The meeting will require a passcode, which will be sent via email to all registrants and presenters by January 16th.

The book of abstracts will be available as soon as possible.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Schedule available for the 2023 ANS Conference, Online, January 20-22, 2023

The schedule is now available for the 2023 ANS Conference!

Registration is now open. The ANS conference will take place online, on Zoom, from January 20-22, 2023. The meeting will require a passcode, which will be sent via email to all registrants and presenters by January 16th.

The book of abstracts will be available as soon as possible.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Publication announcement: Names: A Journal of Onomastics 70, no. 4 is now available

The latest issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics is now available online! Click here to read the latest in onomastics scholarship in volume 70, number 4 of Names. A table of contents appears below. This is a special issue on Names in Children’s Literature.

Names is published as an open access journal available to all via the Journal’s new home at the University of Pittsburgh. All journal content, including the content found in previous volumes, is now available for free online as downloadable PDF files.

Subscribers to the print version of the journal will receive their copies within the next few weeks.

 

Table of Contents

Editorial by I. M. Nick

Articles

Planting Seeds in Literary Narrative: Onomastic Concepts and Questions in Yangsook Choi’s The Name Jar by Anne W. Anderson

“My Name Is…”: Picturebooks Exploring Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Names by Carrie Anne Thomas and Blessy Samjose

The Psammead or It: The Re-naming/Re-gendering of E. Nesbit’s Mythical Creature in French Translation by Mary Bardet

Nazis, Lies, and Lullabies: A Case Study of Charactonyms in the National Socialist Children’s Book Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid by I. M. Nick

Book Reviews

Mayflies by Susan Behrens

Great British Family Names and Their History by T. K. Alphey

Announcement                                                                                                          

American Name Society Conference Call by I. M. Nick

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Last Call for Nominations for the 2022 Names of the Year!

The American Name Society requests nominations for the “Names of the Year for 2022”. The names selected will be ones that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States. It is not necessary, however, for a nominated name to have originated in the US. Any name can be nominated as long as it has been prominent in North American cultural discourse during the past year.

Nominations are called for in the following categories:

  • Personal Names: Names or nicknames of individual real people or individual animals.
  • Place Names: Names or nicknames of any real geographical location, including all natural features, political subdivisions, streets, and buildings. Names of national or ethnic groups based on place names could be included here.
  • Trade Names: Names of real commercial products, as well as names of both for-profit and non-profit incorporated companies and organizations, including businesses and universities.
  • Artistic & Literary Names: Names of fictional persons, places, or institutions, in any written, oral, or visual medium, as well as titles of art works, books, plays, television programs, or movies. Such names are deliberately given by the creator of the work.
  • E-Names: Names of persons, figures, places, products, businesses, institutions, operations, organizations, platforms, and movements that exist in the virtual world.
  • Miscellaneous Names: Any name which does not fit in the above five categories, such as names created by linguistic errors, names of particular inanimate objects, names of unorganized political movements, names of languages, etc. In most cases, such items would be capitalized in everyday English orthography.

Winners will be chosen in each category, and then a final vote will determine the overall Name of the Year for 2022. Anyone may nominate a name. All members of the American Name Society attending the annual meeting will select the winner from among the nominees at the annual ANS meeting on January 20-22 2023.

Survey Link

Advance nominations must be received before January 13, 2022. Nominations will be accepted from the floor at the annual meeting. You can also send your nominations, along with a brief rationale, by email to Deborah Walker: debwalk@gmail.com.

Thank you for your nominations!

 

Seeking New ANS Officers for 2023

Ever thought about getting more involved with the American Name Society?  Here is your opportunity!  The American Name Society is currently looking for a few good people who are interested in joining the Executive Council. Starting in 2023, new officers will be needed to fill the positions listed below.

To apply for one or more of these Executive Council positions, please fill out the application form on this page.

 

Vice President (2023-2025)

The person elected to this position is primarily responsible for co-organizing the ANS annual conference in close cooperation with the ANS President. As conference co-chair, the person in this position will issue an official call for papers, organize a team of reviewers, design the program of paper presentations, and coordinate with the Linguistic Society of America and the other linguistic affiliates or “Sister Societies”: the American Dialect Society (ADS), the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL), the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the America (SSILA), The Association for Linguistic Evidence (TALE), and the North American Association for the History of Language Sciences (NAAHoLS). In addition to these duties, the VP also serves as a voting member of the Executive Council and, as such, is actively involved in the legislative process of the ANS. The person selected for this office has the option of running for the office of ANS President, at the end of his/her term. Candidates for this position are expected to have superior organizational, time-management, and communication skills.

 

Allied Conference Coordinator (2023-2025)

The person elected to this position is principally responsible for organizing the ANS session at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association. This activity involves issuing a call for papers, assembling a team of abstract reviewers, selecting three authors whose work will be presented at the MLA conference, and coordinating the presentation of the three winning abstracts with the MLA administration. In addition to these duties, as a voting member of the ANS Executive Council (EC), the Allied Conference Coordinator participates in the legislative decision-making of the Society. Although the term of service for this position is for two years, the holder of this office may be re-elected pending approval by the EC. Given the fact that this position requires close communication with the MLA, candidates who have a demonstrated expertise in literary onomastics will receive preference.

 

Registration opens for the 2023 ANS Conference, Online, January 20-22, 2023

Registration is now open for the 2023 ANS Conference. The ANS conference will take place online, on Zoom, from January 20-22, 2023.

Detailed information for attendees, along with the book of abstracts, will be sent in January.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

The schedule will be available as soon as possible.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Publication announcement: Names: A Journal of Onomastics 70, no. 3 is now available

The latest issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics is now available online! Click here to read the latest in onomastics scholarship in volume 70, number 3 of Names. A table of contents appears below.

Names is published as an open access journal available to all via the Journal’s new home at the University of Pittsburgh. All journal content, including the content found in previous volumes, is now available for free online as downloadable PDF files.

Subscribers to the print version of the journal will receive their copies within the next few weeks.

 

Table of Contents

Articles

Place Names in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: A Literary Landscape
of Racism by Christine DeVinne

In the Name of Freedom: A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Personal Names Recorded in Fugitive Slave Advertisements Published in New York and New Jersey 18th Century Newspapers by I. M. Nick

“Missouree Was Always Out of Step with Missourah”: Sociolinguistic Variants as Moral Toponyms by Daniel Duncan

Using Onomastics to Inform Diversity Initiatives: Race, Gender, and Names in Academic Radiology in Canada by Sohrab Towfighi, Adrian Marcuzzi, Salman Masood, Mohsin Yakub, Jessica B. Robbins, and Faisal Khosa

Book Reviews

Claire Cock-Starkey, The Real McCoy and 149 Other Eponyms by Beth DiNatale Johnson

Stephen Heard, Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider: How Scientific Names Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes, and Even a Few Scoundrels by I. M. Nick

Obituary

In Memoriam: Wolfgang Peter Ahrens (1940-2022) by I. M. Nick

Announcement                                                                                                          

Invitation to Apply for the American Name Society’s Emerging Scholar Award

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Call for Papers: ANS 2023, Online, 20-22 January 2023


The American Name Society is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. After deliberation of an official proposal made on the 27th of May 2022, the Executive Council of the American Name Society unanimously voted to hold the 2023 Annual Conference online. All presentation sessions will be held online during the three days of the conference. This means that our conference will NOT be held in conjunction with the LSA meeting, which is still slated to be held in person, January 2023 in Denver, CO.

Abstracts in any area of onomastic research are welcome. The DEADLINE for receipt of abstracts is July 31, 2022. To submit a proposal, simply complete the 2023 Author Information Sheet (AIS) found here:

http://www.americannamesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ANS-2023-Author-Info-Sheet.doc

Please email this completed form to ANS Vice President Luisa Caiazzo using the following address: <luisa.caiazzo@unibas.it>. For organizational purposes, please be sure to include the phrase “ANS 2023” in the subject line of your email.

All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Official notification of proposal acceptances will be sent on or before September 30, 2023. All authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of the ANS. Please feel free to contact ANS Vice President, Luisa Caiazzo, <luisa.caiazzo@unibas.it>, should you have any questions or concerns.

Registration for the conference will open in September 2022.

A downloadable PDF of the Call for Papers can be found here.

We look forward to receiving your submission!