About Names: From Welsh roots, Gladys has worked its way through the grapevine

Gladys Knight

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his October 9th column, he looks at the history of the name Gladys.

Gladys is the modern form of Welsh Gwladus. Medieval records in Latin used “Claudia” as its equivalent. Experts disagree on whether Gwladus was just the Welsh form of Claudia or from Welsh gwlad, “countryside.” The first historical Gwladus was St. Gwladus, a princess of Brycheiniog. Kidnapped by Gwynllyw, king of Gwynllwg, she became his queen.

The modern form was spread by the novels “Gladys of Harlech” (1858) by Louisa M. Spooner and “Gladys the Reaper” (1860) by Anne Beale. Both authors were English women living in Wales. Spooner’s tale features a medieval noblewoman and Beale’s a simple country girl. Both show the Welsh as good people oppressed by corrupt Englishmen. The 1870 census includes 128 Gladyses, almost all born during the 1860s in the North. (Perhaps the novels didn’t make it to the South during the Civil War.)

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Gladyses in American history!

About Names: Evolution of Randall has spanned multiple generations

Poet Dudley Randall

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his September 24th column, he looks at the history of the name Randall.

Old Norse Rannulfr, “shield-wolf,” came to England with Norman conquerors in 1066 as Randulf. Clerks writing in Latin made Randolph the common spelling. Randall or Randell was Randolph’s nickname, adding French diminutive “el” to Rand. In 2010, 54,764 Americans had Randall as a surname, while there were 41,129 Randolphs, showing Randall was more common as the everyday medieval form.

Randall and Randolph became rare as first names after 1400, but never vanished. When Social Security’s yearly name lists started in 1880, Randolph ranked 398th and Randall 731st. For the next 55 years, Randolph ranked about the same while Randall steadily rose. Randall surpassed Randolph in 1936. Both then boomed — Randolph peaked at 154th in 1952 and Randall at 53rd in 1955, when 6,684 were born.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Randalls in American history!

Andrew Douglas Clifford maps te reo place names

Andrew Douglas-Clifford, who is in his early twenties, used a range of resources to put together an online map and poster giving New Zealand places and natural features the te reo Māori names bestowed by the indigenous people.

He spent months creating the detailed, interactive online map that offers Māori names for towns, cities, lakes, notable mountain peaks, rivers, bays and international cities and countries. The map on his Map Kiwi website also shows marae locations around the country.

The Skinny on Meal Kit Company Names

Meal kit delivery is relatively new, but the concept has spawned fierce competition in the last six years. With a raft of similar companies vying for the same customers, the pressure is on for branding teams to make sure their company stands out from the crowd. That process starts with the company name. And for those of us outside of the meal kit industry, looking at an entire category like this provides great naming lessons for how to differentiate our brands.

Of course, in its branding and marketing, each company conveys messages beyond what’s obvious from the name. Most of those are common to the category: farm-to-table freshness, great taste, healthful eating, sustainability, ease, convenience. But focusing on the names themselves yields plenty of choice branding morsels.

At Marketing Profs, Mark Skoultchi of the naming firm Catchword dives into the meal kit naming world and provides five takeaways from the naming of meal kit brands. Click through to get some tasty naming naming lessons!

The Changing Place Names of Washington, D.C.

“View looking northwest from Anacostia: [Washington D.C.],” John L. Trout, 1901. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

Kim Edwin, a library technician in the Geography and Map Division, has written about the history of place names in Washington, D.C. for the Library of Congress. She discusses the complicated array of toponyms and political geography over its history. Here’s a sample:

The Residence Act of 1790 created a national capital, known as the Federal District, from portions of Maryland and Virginia, centered on the convergence of the Potomac and the Anacostia rivers, which are names derived from the Algonquian Native American language. In 1791, President George Washington appointed Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant to develop a plan for the new city. This resulted in a map, now famously known as the L’Enfant Plan, an enhanced version of which can be seen below. L’Enfant does not name the new city in his map, but within his layout of streets, marked by circles and diagonals, he shows locations for the “President’s House” as well as the “Congress House.” It even has a “Grand Avenue” on the site of today’s National Mall.

Want to know more? Click through to read it all at the website for the Library of Congress!

About Names: Swahili names like Taraji, Sanaa see swell in popularity

Taraji P. Henson

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his September 10th column, he looks at Swahili names.

Actress Taraji P. Henson turned 48 recently. Bernice and Boris Henson named their daughter Taraji Penda. In Swahili, taraji means “hope” and penda means “love”. Both taraji and penda are verbs in Swahili. “Penda maadui wako” is Swahili for “Love your enemies.”

The English verb “hope” is more often translated by the Swahili word “tumaini” than “taraji.” Swahili speakers use “tumaini” when they trust what’s hoped for will really happen. “Taraji” is a bit more tentative, closer to English “wish.”

Swahili was first spoken in Zanzibar and coastal Tanzania and Kenya. It became the trade language of all East Africa. Today, it has around 75 million speakers in Uganda, Mozambique, Rwanda and the Congo, as well as Kenya and Tanzania.

Since the 1960s, African-American parents have turned Swahili words into names. Many of them aren’t actually used as names in East Africa. Of course, they aren’t the only foreign words turned into American names — Irish “colleen” (girl) and French “chérie” (darling) weren’t names in Ireland or France.

In East Africa, the huge majority of Swahili speakers are Muslim, and most of the names they use are Islamic. Swahili variations of Muslim Arabic names are also used by African-Americans. One of the most common is Omari, Swahili form of the Arabic “Umar,” “long life” or “flourishing,” name of the second caliph after Muhammad’s death. Actor Omari Hardwick (1974), since 2014 starring as the nightclub owner “Ghost” St. Patrick on the crime drama “Power,” has helped this name boom in the African-American community. Omari ranked 512th for American boys in 2017.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Swahili names in American history!

Book Announcement: Onomastics Between Sacred and Profane, ed. by Oliviu Felecan, Vernon Press

Vernon Press announces publication of the volume Onomastics Between Sacred and Profane, edited by Oliviu Felecan, part of the Vernon Series in Language and Linguistics. A free sample of the book is available as a PDF download, containing the Table of Contents, the Foreword, the list of Contributors, the Preface and the Indexes.

Religiously, God is the creator of everything seen and unseen; thus, one can ascribe to Him the names of His creation as well, at least in their primordial form. In the mentality of ancient Semitic peoples, naming a place or a person meant determining the role or fate of the named entity, as names were considered to be mysteriously connected with the reality they designated. Subsequently, God gave people the freedom to name persons, objects, and places. However, people carried out this act (precisely) in relation to the divinity, either by remaining devoted to the sacred or by growing estranged from it, an attitude that generated profane names. The sacred/profane dichotomy occurs in all the branches of onomastics, such as anthroponymy, toponymy, and ergonymy. It is circumscribed to complex and interdisciplinary analysis which does not rely on language sciences exclusively, but also on theology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, geography, history and other connected fields, as well as culture in general.

Despite the contributors’ cultural diversity (29 researchers from 16 countries – England, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, U.S.A., and Zimbabwe – on four continents) and their adherence to different religions and faiths, the studies in Onomastics between Sacred and Profane share a common goal that consist of the analysis of names that reveal a person’s identity and behavior, or the existence, configuration and symbolic nature of a place or an object.

If you would like to order a copy through the publisher, you can get a 24% discount using coupon CFC7736DFEE at Vernon Press. You can also order this book on Amazon.

About Names: Keegan keeps on growing in popularity

Keegan-Michael Key

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his August 27th column, he looks at the history of the name Keegan.

Keegan is an Anglicized version of two Irish surnames. Most Keegans were originally Mac Aodhagáin, “son of Egan.” Egan is from Áeducán, a diminutive of Áed (“fire”), the most common name in seventh-century Ireland. The best known Mac Aodhagáin family founded a law school in County Tipperary around 1350. The first Irish law books were compiled under their sponsorship.

A few Keegans were originally Mac Thadhgáins, “son of Tadgán,” a diminutive of Tadhg, “poet.” In the 1850 United States census, 283 of the 465 people with last name Keegan were born in Ireland.

In 2004, Keegan-Michael Key (born 1971) began six seasons on the sketch-comedy hit “Mad TV.” He probably helped Keegan peak at 222nd in 2007. The name had another small uptick when Key starred in Comedy Central’s “Key & Peele” from 2012 to 2015. Other famous Keegans include pro golfer Bradley (1986), the PGA Rookie of the Year in 2011 after winning the PGA Championship. His fans wear “Keegan vs. Everybody” T-shirts. Chef Keegan Gerhard (1969) hosted “Food Network Challenge” from 2005 to 2010. Keegan Allen (1989) starred as Toby on teen drama “Pretty Little Liars” (2010-2017).

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Keegans in history!

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.”

More people in the Netherlands want to change their first name

The number of people in the Netherlands who apply to have their first names changed has steadily increased over the last few years. These applications do not come from people with awkward or strange names, but from people who have a nickname and want to make this their official name. Noah and Emma topped the list of most popular baby names in 2018. Goodluck, Dikshit, Lovelace, Genius, Narbys-Lenay and Rooney have been some of the more unusual baby names over the last few years.