The American Name Society (ANS) is now issuing its first call for abstracts for an upcoming Special issue of the Society’s journal, NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics.

One of the most fascinating areas of interdisciplinary research involving onomastics,  criminology, and the law is forensic onomastics. The current call for paper proposals for original pieces of research for an upcoming Special Issue of NAMES devoted to this branch of onomastic investigation.   Possible topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

1. The names and naming of crimes, criminals, and/or victims.
2. Crimes involving the illegal use of names (e.g. identity theft/fraud; trademark infringement, verbal threats involving malicious name-calling; the use of modern investigative technology to uncover the names of unknown crime victims and crime perpetrators in cold cases)
3. The names of laws and policies at any level of governance.
4. Laws and policies governing the use or alteration of names
5. Strategies for the translation of names in forensic contexts
6. The clandestine names used by criminals and/or illegal organizations, both online and offline
7. The ways in which the media uses names to discuss crimes, crime victims, and criminal offenders
8. Official strategies or policies used by law enforcement to analyze, process, or store public onomastic data
9. Legal cases fought over names (e.g., the right to use a product name; lawsuits over potentially pejorative names)
10. Naming policies and practices of governmental organizations devoted to names and naming (e.g. regulations for naming national monuments; policies for naming meteorological events (e.g., fires, storms, earthquakes, tidal waves etc.); guidelines for naming geographical features (e.g., bodies of water, mountains, hills, streams, land masses) or structures (canals, levies, dams, etc.); (inter)national policies for naming zoological and/or botanical species

Proposals for research examining any name type, during any period of time, are welcome.  Although all proposals must be written in English, the papers proposed may involve any language(s), spoken, written, or signed.  Both diachronic and synchronic approaches are invited. Investigations may also employ qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Data relevant to either criminal or civil law may be examined.   However, the analysis proposed must be clearly on focused on the onomastic data.  Proposals will be judged upon their thematic fit as well as their potential to make a substantive fact-based contribution to both forensic linguistics and onomastics.  All Interested authors are asked to submit their formal proposals using the following guidelines.

Proposal Submission Process

• Abstract proposals (max. 800 words, not including references) should be sent as an email attachment (PDF format) to Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com);
• Proposals must include a preliminary reference list that follows the formatting regulations of the NAMES Style Sheet;
• Proposals must include “FORENSICS” in the subject line of the email;
• All proposals must include an abstract, a tentative title, the full name(s) of the author(s), the author(s) affiliation(s), and email address(s) in the accompanying email and NOT within the body of the abstract;
• DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by August 31, 2025.
• All proposals will be submitted to a double-blind review process. Authors will be notified about acceptance on or by September 15, 2025
• Final chapters (max 7,000 words, excluding abstracts, graphics, and references) will be due November 15, 2025

For further information about this call, please feel free to contact Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com).

Date: 26-Nov-2025 – 29-Nov-2025
Location: Clarens, South Africa
Contact Person: Chrismi Loth
Meeting Email: kongresETFB@ufs.ac.za

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

2nd Call for Papers:

Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10047495/
Submit your abstract (250 words) by 4 April to kongresETFB@ufs.ac.za

The Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies at the University of the Free State (RSA), in partnership with the Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy as well as the ICOS Working Group on Toponymy, is pleased to announce the next biennial international symposium on place names – ISPN 2025.

Place names serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, they are geospatial indicators of physical locations and geographical features. On the other hand, place names are artefacts of cultural heritage and serve to connect people to places. This two-fold function creates tension from a place-names management perspective. Standardisation is required for effective public communication and record-keeping. However, standardisation inherently requires a selection of one or limited forms of names. This is in contrast to the reality of most societies, whereby multiple names are assigned to one location by different socio-lingual-cultural groups. The challenge is to create an internationally-recognised standardisation system, while retaining the colourful local diversity. With the theme for this symposium, we wish to explore issues around standardisation and toponymic diversity. We need to consider the symbolic importance of place names, and examine the challenges of developing best practices for research and management that are sensitive to local diversity. Papers with a focus on minority and indigenous names, including sign languages, are encouraged in particular.

Potential subtopics
Only a limited number of papers can be accommodated, as all sessions will be plenary. Abstracts (250 words) can be submitted by 4 April 2025 to Dr Chrismi Loth at kongresETFB@ufs.ac.za in the following
(but not limited to) categories of research:
•Recognition beyond standardisation, especially for indigenous and minority place names.
• Best practices for the standardisation, management, and research of multiple place names.
• Diversity in place names stemming from multiple socio-lingual-cultural groups.
• Harmonising toponymic heritage in multicultural and multilingual societies.
• Adequate representation of place-name diversity in texts and on maps.
• Approaches towards standardisation.
• Other dimensions of place names: administrative, commercial and/or economic, cultural and historical/commemorative, physical, political, and linguistic.

Keynote speakers
• Prof Sambulo Ndlovu (University of Eswatini, Eswatini)
• Bill Watt (PlaceNames Australia)

Workshop
Signed Toponymy: Conducting Ethical Research in Deaf Communities
Presenter: Dr Patrick Sibanda (University of the Free State, RSA)

Language of the symposium and workshop
English, with professional South African Sign Language interpreting available. Please indicate requirement for SASL interpreting with abstract submission and registration.

Publication
Depending on the number and quality of papers an accredited publication in our regular proceedings series will be considered: https://ujonlinepress.uj.ac.za/index.php/ujp/catalog/series/ISPN.

The ANS panel at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention #mla26
8-11 January 2026, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

ONOMASTIC RHETORIC: ACTS OF NAMING IN REAL AND/OR IMAGINED WORLDS

Acts of naming people, places, and things are acts of power, whether for good or ill and whether in the real world or in imagined worlds. Sometimes names change, through other acts of power. Does it necessarily follow that accepting a given name is an act of weakness? What acts of naming occur in the liminal space between the real and the imagined? In this panel, we will consider acts of naming people (anthroponyms), characters (charactonyms), places (toponyms), theonyms (divine beings), events, and more in the real world and/or in imagined worlds from any era, from any place, as recorded or found in any media. Useful resources include, the archives of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics (https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/issue/archive), the
ANS list of terminology (https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/keywords), Dorothy Dodge Robbins’ edited collection Literary Onomastics (2023), Star Medzerian Vanguri’s edited collection Rhetorics of Names and Naming (2016), and the Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming (2018).

Proposal Submission Process:
1. Email Dr. Anne W. Anderson (awanderson.editing@gmail.com) as follows:
a. Subject Line: Use “MLA 2026 proposal” in the subject line.
b. Email body: In the email body include the title and first line of the abstract, the
full name(s) of the author(s), their affiliation(s), and their email address(es).
c. Proposal: Attach a PDF file that includes the proposal title, an abstract of up to
350 words, and a list of works cited. Do NOT include author identification in the
PDF.

2. DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 11:59 pm EST on Monday, 17 March 2025.
Authors will be notified about the results of the blind review on or by 27 March 2025.
3. Contributors selected for the thematic panel must be members of both MLA and ANS in order to present their papers; MLA membership must be obtained by 7 April 2024.
4. Questions? Please contact Dr. Anne W. Anderson (awanderson.editing@gmail.com).

Call for Papers:

Canadian Society for the Study of Names (CSSN)

59th Annual Meeting, held virtually and in-person in conjunction with the Congress of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) of Canada George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

May 31stto June 2nd, 2025

The general theme of the 2025 FHSS Congress is: “Reframing togetherness”, and CSSN’s related theme is: “Renaming in our changing World”. Papers on any onomastic or toponymic topic will be welcome, from any discipline or field of research. Authors are encouraged to present their subject matter with clear research methods and outcomes. Presentations are allotted 20 minutes, with 10 minutes added for questions and discussion.

Please submit by January 31st an abstract of 150-250 words, in French or English (language of the presentation, which may even be bilingual), including the title of your paper, the full name and affiliation of each author (first one will present), along with a current email address for each. You may also indicate a preferred day or time period, a general theme under which to group your communication in the programme, or if you wish to present online.

Presenters need not be a current CSSN member to submit an abstract. After acceptance of their paper, in French or in English, they must become a member by paying fees for registering for the Congress. Those from abroad who cannot attend in person have opportunity to present online, under condition of sending their presentation file in advance by the middle of May (details to come in March, after registration to Congress 2025). More information about membership is available on the CSSN membership webpage.

Invite your graduate students enrolled in Canadian postsecondary institution to submit an abstract if their research involves an onomastic theme. The Federation offers the Society the opportunity to award a $500 merit prize for one graduate student presenting in-person at Congress 2025. If you also plan to present your research topic to another association participating in Congress 2025, please mention this as it would be possible to arrange a joint presentation or session and to register for more than one association at once.

For further information about the range of topics you might present on, please see the full-length call for papers on the webpage of the 2025 CSSN annual meeting. Please email your abstract, written in English or in French, to the Programme Committee
members Yaïves Ferland, M.Sc., at yaives.ferland@scg.ulaval.ca, and Marie (Aurélie)
Thériault, Ph.D., at marie.theriault@umontreal.ca, by January 31st, 2025, 11:59pm ET.