The Project for the Study of Jewish Names announces the Thirteenth International Conference on Jewish Names.

The conference will be held as part of the Seventeenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, which will take place from August 6-10, 2017 at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus Campus, Israel.

Call for Papers

The conference committee welcomes papers on all aspects of Jewish onomastics (personal names, family names, epithets and place-names) from the biblical period through the modern age, representing  all Jewish communities world-wide and from all fields of research, including Judaic studies, linguistics, literature, sociology, anthropology, genealogy, and toponymics. Papers will be given in Hebrew and English.

Scholars who wish to present papers are requested to send a 200 word abstract, clearly stating contribution,  a selected bibliography, and a brief academic profile to the address listed below no later than November 30, 2016.

For further information please contact: Professor Aaron Demsky, Director, Project for the Study of Jewish Names [Aaron.Demsky@biu.ac.il]

Steering Committee: Dr. Yigal Levin, Dr. Tsvi Sadan, and Dr. Stephanie Ginensky

All participants must register for the 17th World Congress of Jewish Studies.

Call for Papers for ICOS 2017:

26th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences / Internationalen Kongresses für Onomastik / Congrès International de Sciences Onomastiques.

27 August – 1 September 2017

University of Debrecen (Debrecen, Hungary)

Locality and globality in the world of names

The central topic of the congress is the linguistic position that proper names occupy in our present globalized world. Proper names as linguistic universals are an ancient linguistic category as old as language itself. They were probably created by the communicational situation in which, relying on linguistic signs fostering distinction, humans wanted to mark the things that were most important in their immediate environment. In fact, this ancient function is the most important reason for the existence and use of proper names even today. Nevertheless, at the same time, proper names may be the most characteristic linguistic representations of the global linguistic situation that has evolved up to our times. Communication in our times does not only make the ever more intensive use of proper names inevitable, but it also endows these with ever newer functions, continuously creating new types and sorts of names.

The wide-ranging central topic of the congress offers a number of possible approaches for speakers. Different questions of onomastic theory will come to the foreground, such as the situation of the variable relationships between particular types of names or their continuous interactions and changes. The presentation of the systematic character of names and their manifestation in different linguistic environments calls both for the study of phenomena and the accurate, thorough analysis of particular names. Besides the (historic and descriptive) aspects traditionally found in linguistics, new aspects may also be raised that have come to the fore over recent decades: e.g. socio- and psycho-onomastic or even cognitive frame sets; and, besides all these, even related disciplines, such as language policies or different approaches of applied science, may come to contribute to our knowledge concerning proper names.

The deadline for paper proposals is 31st October 2016. The program will be finalized in December 2016.

The University of Warsaw has announced an upcoming lexicography conference called “Key Words / Słowa klucze / Schlüssel-Wörter.” The purpose of the conference is to bring together different methodologies and levels of language/discourse analysis.

The deadline for 300-word abstract submissions is August 31, 2016. The conferences languages are English, Polish, and German. Interested author are asked to email their abstracts to [sloworoku.polonuw.edu.pl].

A select group of accepted presentations will later be published in the journal “Tekst i Dyskurs” / “Text und Diskurs.”

The 19th Century Lexicography Conference will be held from the 6th to the 7th of April, 2018, at Stanford University in California. The aim of the conference is to compare dictionary-making in Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Pacific and beyond to discern inter- and intralingual lexicographical pattern. Interested contributors are asked to send abstracts by the 1st of September 2016 to Sarah Ogilvie (sogilviestanford.edu) and Gabriella Safran (gsafranstanford.edu). Abstracts may be no longer than 300 words (excluding references).