Call for Nominations for the 2018 Name of the Year

The American Name Society requests nominations for the “Names of the Year for 2018”. 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 and Canada.

Nominations are called for in the five following categories:

Personal Names: Names or nicknames of individual real people, animals, or hurricanes.
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 would 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.
Miscellaneous Names: Any name which does fit in the above four categories, such as names created by linguistic errors, names of particular inanimate objects other than hurricanes, names of unorganized political movements, names of languages, etc. In general, to be considered a name 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 2018. 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 in New York City, New York on January 4, 2019. The winner will be announced that evening at a joint celebration with the American Dialect Society.

Advance nominations must be received before January 2, 2019. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the annual meeting. Please send your nominations, along with a brief rationale, by e-mail toDr. Cleveland K. Evans: cevans@bellevue.edu or by email to Deborah Walker: debwalk@gmail.com

The Call for Nominations can be downloaded here.

Registration opens for the 2019 ANS Conference, New York City, NY, January 3-6, 2019

Registration is now open for the 2019 ANS Conference in New York City, NY. The ANS conference will take place in conjunction with the Linguistics Society of American (LSA) Conference from January 3-6, 2019.

To register, you must join the ANS or renew your ANS membership.

LSA Registration is now open! Go to the LSA Meeting page to register. You must be a member of the LSA (as well as the ANS) in order to attend.

You can also reserve your room at the Sheraton in New York City via the LSA. Use the LSA link to receive a special discounted room rate.

Note that to renew your ANS membership, you will be redirected to the Taylor & Francis website where you will need to enter information from your renewal notice.

Once your membership is up to date, 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 and the LSA Conference, including rate and hotel information, please visit our Conference Page.

Seeking New ANS Officers for 2019

Ever thought about getting more involved with the American Name Society but did not know how? 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 January 2019, new officers will be needed to fill the positions listed below.

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

ANS Treasurer (2019-2021)

The person elected to this position will be responsible for keeping official record of all funds and securities of the Society; giving and keeping receipts for moneys due and payable to the Society; depositing all moneys in the name of the Society; responding to inquiries from annual conference attendees regarding registration payments; and informing the ANS President, the members of the ANS Executive Council, and the general membership about the financial status of the Society via an end-of-the year fiscal report. The ANS Treasurer will work closely with the ANS President, Vice President, and Membership Officer as well as Taylor & Francis, the current publisher of the ANS Journal NAMES. The person elected to this position is expected to have demonstrable accounting experience and competence in using standard spreadsheets programs (e.g., Excel). Applicants for this position must be long-term ANS members in good-standing.

Member-at-large (2019-2022)

The person elected to this position will serve as a voting member of the Executive Council (EC) and is expected to participate actively in the legislative decision-making involved in resolutions and motions placed before the EC. In addition to these duties, members-at-large serve on various auxiliary sub-committees to, for example, help with the nomination of new officers, coordination of the annual conference, and organization of allied conferences. Officers in this position can renew their term of service twice.

Information Officer (2019-2021)

The person elected to this position will be responsible for maintaining the ANS social media presence via our website as well as Facebook and Twitter. The main duties for this position include the following: updating the news page of the ANS website on a weekly basis; posting special alerts (e.g., conference announcements, calls for papers, ANS newsletters); responding to requests made via the Facebook and Twitter accounts; and adding books that are reviewed in NAMES to the ANS Amazon Wishlist. The person chosen for this position must not only be highly computer literate, but also an avid user of social media. Experience in using WordPress is desirable but not mandatory. Training will be provided. The new Information Officer must also have excellent writing and time-management skills as well as a high level of creativity. The Information Officer will work very closely with the ANS President and Vice President throughout the year.

Registration opens for the 2019 ANS Conference, New York City, NY, January 3-6, 2019

To register, you must join the ANS or renew your ANS membership.

LSA Registration is now open! Go to the LSA Meeting page to register. You must be a member of the LSA (as well as the ANS) in order to attend.

You can also reserve your room at the Sheraton in New York City via the LSA. Use the LSA link to receive a special discounted room rate.

Note that to renew your ANS membership, you will be redirected to the Taylor & Francis website where you will need to enter information from your renewal notice.

For more information about the ANS Conference and the LSA Conference, including rate and hotel information, please visit our Conference Page.

Seeking New ANS Officers for 2019

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

ANS Treasurer (2019-2021)

Member-at-large (2019-2022)

Information Officer (2019-2021)

Finding That Perfect Business Name Is No Easy Feat

American Name Society Information Officer Laurel Sutton was recently interviewed at WGLT for a story about business naming. You can click through to read the story, or listen online!

Here’s a sample:

Starting a business is hard. You need money, a product or service people actually need, a lawyer. You need to find a space, a staff, and start advertising. It’s a lot.

One of the hardest parts is picking a good name. And good doesn’t just mean catchy or clever. A good name means it’s both appropriate and available, said Laurel Sutton, senior strategist, linguist, and co-founder of Catchword, one of the most prominent naming agencies in the world.

“That’s the biggest hurdle that most people face,” Sutton told GLT. “There are so many names out there already. There are hundreds of thousands of trademarks in the U.S. alone. There are millions worldwide. To find the name for your thing that’s not already taken, that’s the hard part.”

Registration opens for the 2019 ANS Conference, New York City, NY, January 3-6, 2019

To register, you must join the ANS or renew your ANS membership.

Note that to renew your ANS membership, you will be redirected to the Taylor & Francis website where you will need to enter information from your renewal notice.

For more information about the ANS Conference and the LSA Conference, including rate and hotel information, please visit our Conference Page.

Call for Papers (Third Extended Call): ANS 2019, New York City, NY, January 3-6, 2019

The ANS is inviting abstract submissions for the 2019 annual conference to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America. Abstracts in any area of onomastic research are welcome. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is July 31, 2018. To submit a proposal, simply complete the 2019 Author Information Form.

Please email this completed form to Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins using the following address: drobbins@latech.edu. For organizational purposes, please be sure to include the phrase “ANS 2019” in the subject line of your email. Presenters who may need additional time to secure international payments and travel visas to the United States are urged to submit their proposal as soon as possible.

All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Official notification of proposal acceptances will be sent on or before September 30, 2018. All authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of the ANS and need to register with both the ANS and the Linguistic Society of America. Please feel free to contact Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins should you have any questions or concerns.

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

We look forward to receiving your submission!

Call for Papers (Third Extended Call): ANS 2019, New York City, NY, January 3-6, 2019

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

We look forward to receiving your submission!

Call for Papers: 2019 ANS Conference Special Panel on Literary Names

The ANS is inviting abstract submissions for a panel on Literary Names for the 2019 annual conference to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America. The purpose of the panel is to highlight research in, and study of, names in works of fiction.

All professional names enthusiasts are invited to submit an abstract for a 20-minute presentation. Abstract proposals should answer one or more of the following questions:

How do the texts under analysis make use of onomastics to establish and convey character and/or plot?
How does linguistic analysis bear on the reading of these texts?
How is the field of onomastics enhanced by your research?

To submit a proposal, simply send a 250-word abstract proposal and a 100- word professional biography to Susan Behrens [sbehrens@mmm.edu] by the 15th of July 2018. For organizational purposes, please be sure to include the phrase “ANS 2019 Panel” 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, 2018. All authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of the ANS and need to register with both the ANS and the Linguistic Society of America. Please feel free to contact Susan Behrens should you have any questions or concerns.

We look forward to receiving your submission!