Conferences

Call for Papers: Tagung Namengeographie, Mainz, Germany, Sept. 17-18 2018

On September 17 and 18, 2018, an international conference on the topic of name geography will take place in the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. The reason for this is that the German Family Name Atlas (DFA) was finished in July 2017 with the publication of the sixth volume. The aim of the project was to record the most common surnames in Germany in their spatial distribution on the basis of grammatical and lexical questions. Thus, the atlas could not only show the distinctive regional distribution of many family names, but it also proves to be a catalyst and model for further family name geographical and lexicographic projects in Germany and abroad. Examples are the “Digital Surname Dictionary of Germany”, the “Surname Atlas of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Hesse”, the “Luxembourg Family Name Atlas” or the “Luxembourgish family name dictionary”. In addition, it turns out that the geographical evaluation also leads to new insights in other branches of onomastics, as investigations, for example, on call, settlement, guest house or street names show.

Possible topics are:
· Evaluations with material from the DFA, interpretation of DFA maps, including the inclusion of adjacent disciplines.
· Presentation of work in progress, completed or planned name geographical projects (family names and other name types) at home and abroad.
· Geographical studies in areas that have not been researched so far, such as business names.
· Lectures from neighboring disciplines such as dialectology, geography, digital humanities, computational linguistics, computer science, which contribute to the further development of the name geography (compulsory is graphic material).
· Methodical possibilities, technical solutions, visualization of name data.

The deadline for abstract submission is March 31, 2018. Abstracts can be sent by e-mail to namengeographie@adwmainz.de. More information can be found here.

David Peacock: Place-Names of Berkshire, Berkshire, UK, May 23 2018

On May 23, 2018, from 2-4 pm, the Berkshire Family Historical Society presents local historian and author, Dr David Peacock, who will talk about the subject of local place names.

Dr. Peacock is a former teacher of politics and history at Padworth College, and also gives evening classes on local history at Newbury College and Reading University. He is Chairman of the Newbury Society. What’s in a name? Rather more than might at first be apparent if you start to look into the meaning of local place names. David will explain the origins of many of Berkshire’s names and explain the ways in which to identify where place names originate from, drawing on examples from across the county.

This is the fourth in a series of five talks this quarter around the theme of the English Civil War, timed to commemorate the 375th anniversary of the Siege of Reading. After the talk, tea and cake will be served. The talk will be given at the Centre for Heritage and Family History in Reading, Berkshire. The cost is £5 (£4 members) and includes tea and cake.

Call for Papers: Postcolonial Language Studies: Changes and Challenges, Zurich, Switzerland, June 4-6 2018

From the 4th to the 6th of June 2018, researchers working within the area of post-colonial studies are encouraged to attend a special conference in Zurich, Switzerland.  The interdisciplinary conference, “Postcolonial Language Studies: Changes and Challenges”, will encompass the fields of anthropological linguistics, historical linguistics, language documentation, and sociolinguistics. Researchers who are interested in presenting a formal paper are encouraged to submit a 300-word abstract (excl. references) to iacpl@es.uzh.ch by January 28, 2018.

Call for Papers: 28th international conference on British and American Studies (B.A.S.), Timisoara, Romania, May 17-19 2018

From the 17th to the 19th of May 2018, the city of Timisoara, Romania will be the host of an international conference on British and American Studies.  Among the topics of discussion at this scientific gathering are translation studies, British and Commonwealth Literature, Cultural Studies, and American Studies.  Researchers who are interested in presenting their scholarship are encouraged to submit a 60-word abstract by the 15th of February 2018.  More information on the submission process and the conference can be found via the conference website. The Call for Papers can be found here.

“Rohingya” Chosen 2017 Name of the Year

Rohingya displaced Muslims, Tasnim News Agency, Author: Seyyed Mahmoud Hosseini

“Rohingya” was chosen the Name of the Year for 2017 by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 5, 2018.

The Myanmar army has targeted the Rohingya, an Islamic group, and has perpetrated massacres that have the earmarks of genocide. Myanmar’s government has tried to prevent people, including Pope Francis, from using the name Rohingya. The UN’s Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has said “To strip their name from them is dehumanising to the point where you begin to believe that anything is possible.”

Maria was chosen ANS’s Personal Name of the Year. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in September. The irony of a name associated by many in Puerto Rico with the Virgin Mary’s compassion being given to a storm whose aftermath has led to questioning the compassion of the federal government was cited by ANS members as a reason for the choice before the vote.

#MeToo was chosen as the Miscellaneous Name of the Year. This is the name of a movement encouraging those who have been sexually assaulted or harassed to share their experiences by using the #MeToo hashtag on various social media platforms.

Charlottesville was chosen as the Place Name of the Year.  This Virginia college town became a symbol of racism and resistance to it when an alt-right/Neo-Nazi march there on August 12 resulted in the death of counterprotestor Heather Heyer, and Donald Trump later referred to some of the white nationalist protestors as “good people.”

Nambia was chosen as Fictional Name of the Year. In September, President Trump lavished praise on the health care system of Nambia during a speech at the United Nations. Just one little problem: There is no such country. (Trump may have meant Namibia, an actual African country.) Trump mentioned “Nambia” twice in the speech.

The American Name Society is a scholarly organization founded in 1951 devoted to studying all aspects of names and naming. The Name of the Year vote has been held since 2004. “Aleppo“ was the 2016 Name of the Year. “Caitlyn Jenner” won for 2015, “Ferguson” for 2014, “Francis” for 2013, and “Sandy” for 2012.

For further information contact Dr. Cleveland Evans, chair of the Name of the Year committee, at cevans@bellevue.edu or 402-210-7458.

Call for Papers: LRI 4 Workshop, Language Policy – Language Use – Language Standard, Merano, Italy, June 7-8 2018

The 4th Workshop of the Linguistic Colloquium: Language, Region, Identity (LRI 4) will be held from the 7th to the 8th of June 2018 in Merano, Italy.  The purpose of this colloquium is to foster scientific exchanges within the Alpine region of Italy, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.  The specific areas of linguistic research to be covered in the workshop include Applied Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Sociolinguistics. The theme of the workshop is “Language Policy – Language Use – Language Standard”.  New researchers (PhD students and post-docs) are especially encouraged to submit an abstract for possible presentation.  The deadline for submission is February 15, 2018.  You can find the official Call for Papers here, and more information at the LRI website.

Call for Papers: SEM2018—7th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics, New Orleans, Louisiana, June 5-6 2018

In New Orleans, Louisiana (USA), the 7th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (SEM2018) will be held from the 5th to the 6th of June 2018, co-located with NAACL 2018. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers working in the fields of semantics of natural languages and its computational modeling. The conference embraces symbolic and probabilistic approaches. The Call for Papers can be found here. Paper submission are due March 2, 2018.