Member News

Call for Papers for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference, Chicago, IL, January 3-6, 2019

ANS Panel at the Modern Language Association Conference

January 3-6th, 2019 in Chicago, IL

The American Name Society is inviting abstract proposals for a panel with the literary theme “Borrowed Names and interactions in Literature.” Literary interactions between authors have always been of great interest in Literary Studies and Literary Theory. Influences, allusions, and intertexts can significantly affect the onomastic choices of an author and result in name borrowings. The papers of this panel will focus either on examples of these practices, thus contributing to the understanding of specific naming choices, or on the role of literary onomastics in theories of intertextuality, allusion, etc.

For more information about MLA 2019, check out the official website.

Proposal submission process:

  1. Abstracts proposals of up to 400 words should be sent as an email attachment (PDF format) to Dr Andreas Gavrielatos (a.gavrielatos@reading.ac.uk).
  2. Proposals should include “MLA proposal” in the subject line of the email.
  3. All submissions must include an abstract title, the full name(s) of the author(s), the author affiliation, and email address in the body of the email and NOT with the abstract.
  4. DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 5pm GMT on 31 March 2018. Authors will be notified about results of the blind review on or by 30 March 2018.
  5. Contributors selected for the thematic panel must be members of both MLA and ANS in order to present their papers.
  6. For further information, please contact Dr A. Gavrielatos (a.gavrielatos@reading.ac.uk).

More information about ANS and MLA conferences in available on the Conferences page of this website.

A podcast about baby names!

Announcing the Baby Names Podcast, hosted by sisters Jennifer Moss (ANS member) and Mallory Moss Katz, creators of BabyNames.com. Join them as they dish about name trends, the latest celebrity baby names, and take your questions about names and naming.

In the first episode, Jennifer and Mallory talk about their own names, names from the Winter Olympics, the latest celebrity baby names and more. The podcast is available on iTunes and Google Play.

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Personal Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Personal Names group, run by Maryann Parada.

The ANS Personal Names group aims to create a community where news, ongoing research, and other ideas regarding any facet of personal names may be shared. Discussion is also encouraged, including on the relationship between personal names and identity, policy, orthography, perceptions, and societal trends.

Dr. Maryann Parada is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at California State University Bakersfield, U.S.A. She has been researching onomastics since 2010. She is interested in names of all types, but especially in Hispanic names in minority contexts. She has researched topics such as the role of birth order in naming among Latino immigrant families, the interplay between name ethnicity and language proficiency perceptions, and the symbolic retention of archaic <x> in Mexican naming practices.

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Trade Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Trade Names group, run by Mirko Casagranda.

A combination of verbal and visual elements, Trade Names are often a mirror of society in which language and culture intertwine. The aim of the ANS Trade Names group is to share and discuss information and news about trade names, brand names and trademarks. Members are encouraged to participate in the debate on what defines trade names, how they function and how they influence our everyday life.

Dr. Mirko Casagranda is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calabria, Italy. He has been researching onomastics since 2012. Along with trade names, he is interested also in place names in postcolonial contexts. He has published articles in English and Italian about names in Canada and other English-speaking countries. Between 2015 and 2017, he served as a member at large of the ANS Executive Council.

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Place Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Place Names group, run by Evgeny Shokhenmayer.

The purpose of the ANS Place Names group is to share interesting information about various place names. Besides that, our goals are to represent and promote the American Name Society, provide valuable content concerning toponymy of all kinds, grow the community and attract new members, and encourage participation from our members.

Dr. Evgeny Shokhenmayer has been researching onomastics since 2002 (20 articles in French, 15 in English, and 5 in Russian). Since 2012, he has been the blogger behind the website e-Onomastics. In 2017, he was elected as Web Officer at ICOS (International Council of Onomastic Sciences), where he updates the website, coordinates the Facebook page, and manages the Twitter channel.

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Literary Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Literary Names group, run by Susan Behrens.

The SIG for Literary Names is a chatting/meeting place for readers who love to notice names of characters in fiction, and who also are fascinated by books in which naming is an integral plot device.

Susan Behrens has published many book reviews for Names (the ANS journal) detailing the theme of names in novels that on the surface are about other things. For the 50th anniversary of the publication of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, she found connections between fiction and real-life names in the Plath world, some of which even led to legal tangles.

Knowing that there are other such like-minded readers out there, we hope that the group can be a collection of all these “noticings.”

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

“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.

Last Call! Nominations for the 2017 Name of the Year

The American Name Society requests nominations for the “Names of the Year for 2017”. The names selected will be ones that best illustrates, 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 four 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 companies and organizations, including businesses, universities, and political parties.

Fictional/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.

Winners will be chosen in each category, and then a final vote will determine the overall Name of the Year for 2017. 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 Salt Lake City, Utah on January 5, 2018. The winner will be announced that evening at a joint celebration with the American Dialect Society.

Advance nominations must be received before January 2, 2018. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the annual meeting. Please send your nominations, along with a brief rationale, to Dr. Cleveland K. Evans at cevans[@]bellevue.edu.

The Call for Nominations can be downloaded here.