Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo has signed an executive order announcing the state would move forward with changing its official name due to its ties to American slavery. The state’s official name, “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” appears on state documents. But the order would shorten it to just “Rhode Island”.

“The pain that this association causes to some of our residents should be of concern to all Rhode Islanders and we should do everything in our power to ensure that all communities can take pride in our state,” the governor wrote. The new name would take effect “as soon as practicable” and apply to all state government communications, including agency websites and correspondence.

At The Conversation, Trevon Logan (Hazel C. Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics, The Ohio State University) writes about the history of black names in the US.

Many scholars have discussed black names as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement in the 1960s – but as Logan observes, black names aren’t new:

Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights movement, perhaps attributable to the Black Power movement and the later black cultural movement of the 1990s as a way to affirm and embrace black culture. Before this time, the argument goes, blacks and whites had similar naming patterns.

Historical evidence does not support this belief.

Until a few years ago, the story of black names depended almost exclusively on data from the 1960s onward. New data, such as the digitization of census and newly available birth and death records from historical periods, allows us to analyze the history of black names in more detail.

Head on over to read the entire article to learn more about black names in the context of African American cultural history.

In the 1966 “Star Trek” episode “Miri,” the title character (right) uses “the Before Time” to describe her world before a devastating plague

In his Word on the Street column in the Wall Street Journal, linguist Ben Zimmer discusses the curious phrase “the before time”. It’s used these days to refer to everyday life before the coronavirus pandemic, but where did it come from?

Beginning in the Middle English of the late 14th century, “beforetime” or “beforetimes” could be used as an adverb meaning “in the past, formerly.” “Beforetime” shows up frequently in the King James version of the Bible. But, as with many pop culture references, the current use is probably because of Star Trek. As Zimmer says:

We likely owe the “Before Time” label to an episode of the original Star Trek series broadcast in 1966, in which the crew of the Enterprise encounter a planet populated by children who survived a man-made plague. A young girl name Miri (whose name also serves as the title of the episode) explains how the planet’s grown-ups, known as “Grups,” disappeared: “That was when they started to get sick in the Before Time. We hid, then they were gone.”

Head over the Wall Street Journal to read more! (If you don’t have a subscription, you can find a PDF of the article here.)

Exciting developments are afoot at DMNES central, as they’ve partnered with Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts for their summer internship programme, which means that the Dictionary Project has four research interns working for them for the next 8-12 weeks! So many back-burner projects are being brought to the front burner and are now already bubbling away.

In addition to working behind the scenes, each will write a few blog posts updating their progress and what they’re learning/finding out, as well as take over the twitter account for a week. Let us briefly introduce thems: Adelia Brown (majoring in Philosophy and English), Juliet Pepe (majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior), Sidney Boker (English major) and K. J. Lewis (studying Physics, Engineering and English).

Jennifer Moss, longtime member of the American Name Society and owner of BabyNames.com, has chosen a unique and powerful way to show solidarity with the black community and support for Black Lives Matter.

Instead of the usual popular name rankings and photos of babies, the site’s homepage shows a black box with dozens of names, all belonging to black Americans who’ve died due to police violence or, in a few cases, at the hands of civilians.

“Each of these names was somebody’s baby,” the site reads. A reminder of the importance of names.

Chinese netizens on May 31, 2020 protested against the US’ continued hyping of doctor Li Wenliang’s death to attack China, saying the US should find fault with itself and reflect on George Floyd’s death rather than point its fingers at others. Some Net users suggested renaming the road near the US Embassy in Beijing as Floyd Road in commemoration of the victim of US racism and police violence.

Fu Xuejie, the wife of late doctor Li Wenliang, has voiced her opposition to a US lawmaker’s push that calls for the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in the US to be renamed Li Wenliang Plaza, saying she was “very sad to hear that.”

Frank Herbert’s Dune is one of the well-known science-fiction novels of the 20th century. Set in a fictional feudal universe and centered on the conflict between two powerful houses, it’s a dense book full of terminology that Herbert crafted from many sources, but that feel almost impossible to pronounce unless you’re familiar with the languages he borrowed from to give Dune its unique tone.

If you’re curious how to pronounce some of the oft-repeated terms in Dune but have no idea where to start, you’re in luck! One clever fan compiled sound clips of Herbert himself saying the words of Dune on a blog called Usul’s Homepage.

Many of the words in Dune appear to come from Arabic root words, but Herbert doesn’t actually use the proper Arabic pronunciations in his reading. It appears he anglicized much of it, perhaps intentionally or perhaps from his own misunderstanding of Arabic.

(Original post at Nerdist)