2015 Emerging Scholar Award Winner

David Robertson (University of Victoria)
Naming Chinook Jargon

The Pacific Northwest “trade language” (pidgin) Chinook Jargon originally lacked a name. As Northwesterners became familiar with it, it gained a variety of glottonyms. This study examines how the standardly recognized name “Chinook Jargon” trumped its competitors. The history that emerges is one of 19th-century incipient recognition of contact languages, and of Euro-American metalinguistic attitudes toward nonstandard varieties of languages.… Read More

Resources: International Name Societies

Reach out to your local name society!

International

Africa

Asia

North America

Canada

United States

South America

Europe

Australia

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Resources: Journals

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Resources for Place Names

Learn more about place names on the following websites:

Placenames.com – Find countries, cities, towns, villages, mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, islands, and other geographic and administrative place names.

GeoNames – geographical database of place names

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names – find information about named places

Scots Words and Place-names – glossary of Scots words which are used in place-names

Gaelic Place-names of Scotland – national advisory partnership for Gaelic place-names in Scotland.… Read More