In recent months, the European leaders have been struggling to cope with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who continue to seek refuge within the European Union. According to a recent report released by EUROSTAT, the statistical office of the European Union, “the number of first time asylum applicants increased by 86% in the first quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.”

According to many international human rights organizations, the EU’s policies for dealing with this humanitarian emergency have been dismal. Within Germany, the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been particularly sharply criticized for failing to respond quickly and effectively enough to this crisis.

In the midst of all this criticism, the Chancellor has received an unusual vote of confidence from an unexpected source. As a sign of her gratitude, 26 year old Ophelya Adé, an asylum-seeker from Ghana, named her newborn baby daughter Angela Merkel Adé. When asked by the naming authorities in Hanover why she had chosen that name, Adé replied that she liked Merkel. Whether the new Fraulein Merkel will be allowed to remain in Germany along with the other 750 foreigners who have applied for asylum in Hannover remains to be seen.

Click these links for more information in English and in German.

On the 22 of July 2011, 77 people were brutally murdered in one of the worst acts of domestic terror to ever hit Norway. The massacre began with an early morning car bomb that exploded in Oslo’s government district, injuring more than 200 and killing 8 people. Later that afternoon as law enforcement officials worked their way through the locked-down district in their search for the assailant(s), panicked reports began to pour in from the island of Utøya, where scores of teenagers were spending their summer at the Norwegian Labour Party’s annual Youth Camp. By the time special forces had arrived, victims’ bodies were already lining the island’s shores.

This summer, for the first time since the massacre, a group of students from the Norwegian Labour Party has returned to the Utøya. For many within the Party, the island has become a symbol of national unity against hatred and a sacred place of remembrance. To honor the memory of those who lost their lives on that day, the Norwegian government has erected a memorial featuring the names of many who died during the hate crime.

However, some of the victims’ families have asked that their loved ones’ names not be placed on the memorial. Their loss, they explain, is simply too private to be added to the list. Other survivor families take issue with the fact that officials did not sufficiently consulted in the memorial plan-making. As one parent explained to a UK Guardian reporter, “We all want to honour our children. […] But we all deserve to be asked. It’s our children’s names.”

For more information click here and here.

The final tally is in: The most popular personal names in Estonia for the year 2014 have been announced by the nation’s Ministry of the Interior.

The top 5 Estonian Girls’ Names:

1. Sofia
2. Eliise
3. Maria
4. Mia
5. Lisandra

The top 5 Estonian Boys’ Names:

1. Rasmus
2. Artjom
3. Robin
4. Martin
5. Oliver

What is particularly striking about these results is the degree to which American and Estonian parents of baby girls seem to share the same onomastic tastes. Many of the top Estonian girls’ names are common in the US as well. For example, according to data collected by babynames.com, in the US, Sofia is ranked twelfth and Mia is ranked sixth.

As for those parents who brought home a bouncing baby boy in 2014, the name preferences seemed to show a greater national divide. While the American favorite Liam is nowhere to be found amongst the Estonia’s top 25 baby boy names, the Balkan favorite Rasmus was chosen so infrequently by American parents in 2014 that it was not even included in the national ranking.

Click here for more on popular baby names in the US.

Click here for more on the top baby names in Estonia.

Upon marriage Japan’s current legislation forces a couple to decide on a single family name. While the law does allow for either partner’s name to be chosen, in more than 95% of the cases, the wife changes to her new husband’s last name. However, this tradition may soon see a change.

Japan’s Supreme Court recently announced that starting in November 2015, it will be re-examining the constitutionality of the current surname laws. This court review comes on the heels of claimant demands that they be allowed to select separate last names despite being married. The legal question which the court will have to answer is whether having different surnames in marriage is a right guaranteed by the constitution.

For more information, in Japanese, from the Nikkei financial newspaper, click here.

The Northern Territory in Australia is lobbying to become an official state by the year 2018. As a part of the effort, residents are searching for a befitting new name for what they hope will be Australia’s seventh state.

One of the top candidates is Wonderland. With Alice Springs as the capital, this state name would allow for the whimsical word play “Alice in Wonderland”.

Other popular onomastic nominees include “State of Kate”, in honor of Kate Middleton, and “State of Evolution”, a name inspired by the famous Australian toponym Darwin, which took its moniker from the surname of the revolutionary scientist, Charles Darwin.

For other place name suggestions currently under consideration, click here.

What do you call a narrow, virtually hidden stream which trickles along a densely green moor? What about the name of the shadows that are cast against the moorland clouds as they drift across the blue sky on a windy day?

In Irish Gaelic, these two natural events have been given specific names: caochan and rionnach maoim.

As writer Robert Macfarlane explains in a recent Guardian article, the Gaelic language is filled with such dazzling onomastic treasures. Unfortunately, in a world preoccupied with mirco-blogging, bookmarking, and media-sharing, many people have forgotten what real twitter sounds like or what pirr, the Shetlandic name for the light touch of wind that dances upon the skin, feels like.

In a growing plea to preserve these names and rediscover these experiences, Macfarlane and others are lobbying for “rewilding” the language we use to describe the non-virtual world around us. Click here  for an editorial that explains more about this movement.

In Tartu, Estonia, along the Emajõgi riverbank, a naming controversy has erupted over a new street name. After spending what many felt was an exorbitant amount of money for a lawyer to develop a name for the new thoroughfare, residents of the once nameless street were horrified by the solicitor’s final toponymic suggestion: Madruse. It translates into ‘The Sailors’ in English.

As defenders of the street name explain, the proposal has to be seen in the geographic context. In a neighborhood where other streets are named Kapteni ‘The Capitans’ and Lootsi ‘The (River) Pilots’, the quaint name ‘The Sailors’ would fit right in.

However, residents of the street complain that the comparatively low nautical status of sailors relative to that of marine positions immortalized in the neighboring street names constitutes a collective insult. While officials might have been willing to overlook that perceived slight, the fact that the street name has become the butt of many jokes throughout the nation has led the government to conclude that the name Madruse has to go. The search is now on to find a new street name.

This is not the first time that fights have arisen in Estonia over who gets the most prestigious name. In another neighborhood where the streets are named after regal birds of prey such as Kotka, ‘The Eagle’, residents living on ‘Duck Street’ say their street name is simply humiliating and they would prefer the name Kondori or ‘The Condors’.

For more on this controversy, in Estonian, click here.

Nike recently announced that it is officially changing the name of one of its sneakers. Previously known as Zenji, the Nike footwear has been re-named Juvenate. The reason for the name change is that the original name was dangerously close to an Arabic slur that is as offensive as the English “N-word.” According to Nike representatives, company officials were completely unaware of the similarity and had chosen the z-word to describe the zen-like state of comfort the sneaker provides. True to their word, buyers who go to the Nike website and type in the old name will be automatically brought to the Juvenate webpage.

Click here for additional information.

Each year, the famous German dictionary publisher, Langenscheidt, crowns “the Youth Word of the Year” from amongst hundreds of linguistic innovations making up German youth-speak. For the year 2015, several German names have already made their way onto the top ten list of potential winners. For example, according to Langenscheidt, the surname of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been used to generate the new German verb “to merkel” which is German youth slang for “to do nothing or refusing to make a clear decision.”

This sardonic nameplay is not the first time that controversial political policies have inspired German teens. Last year, after reports began to surface that the CIA and NSA had spied on several of European leaders, not one but two new verbs were derived from the surnames of US Americans caught up in the scandal. The first was President Obama, whose last name was used to form the new predicate “to obama,” a new synonym for the verb “to spy” or “abhören.” The second surname which was used to create a new word was Snowden. In that same year, German teens borrowed this last name to generate the predicate “entsnowden” meaning “to bring to light” or “to uncover.”

For additional information in German, see this article, this article, and this article.

Click here to cast your vote for name of the year for the United States.

According to medical experts, addiction to the synthetic methamphetamine nicknamed “ice” can cause severe mood swings, violent hallucinations, paranoia, psychosis, and unpredictable bouts of aggression as well as kidney disease, liver failure, brain damage, stroke and death. Despite these dangers, cities and towns around the world are reporting that the addiction rates to this drug have reached epidemic portions. In New Zealand, the town of Wellington has been so decimated by ice that residents and visitors have nicknamed the tiny town “The South Pole”.

Wellington is not the first city to be bestowed a nickname inspired by residents’ drug consumption. US American rap artist, Big Moe, named the city of Houston, Texas the “City of Syrup” to draw attention to the rising rate of residents addicted to codeine-infused cough syrup. The progressive marijuana policies of Canada’s Pacific Northwest metropolis of Vancouver has inspired some insiders to nickname the green city Vansterdam, a blend of the place names Vancouver and Amsterdam, another city known for its liberal marijuana laws.

For more information about this phenomenon, see this article and this article.