The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, New York is currently holding a moving exhibition on the fates of hundreds of displaced children who found temporary shelter and relief in a German convent named Kloster Indersdorf.  The convent was requisitioned immediately after WWII by the US armed forces for the care and potential repatriation of homeless children found on the streets of war-torn Europe.   Dangerously malnourished and severely traumatized by the horrors of the Holocaust, these smallest survivors often had little more than their first and last name as a connection to their birth families and homelands.  Entitled “My Name is…The lost children of Kloster Indersdorf”, this powerful exhibition is a haunting reminder of the devastating effect war has upon the  most innocent and powerless of victims, both past and present. The exhibit will remain open until the 23rd of July 2017. 

 

The norm in South Korea is to call your colleagues or superiors not by their given names but by their positions. It’s the same for addressing your older friends or siblings, your teacher or any person on the street. But some companies are looking to eliminate some of this hierarchy. The best way to do that, it seems, is dictating that employees take English names. Using the actual name of your boss or co-workers feels impolite. But, hopefully, calling him or her an English nickname taps into a different cultural mind-set. Rachel Premack, writing in the Washington Post, looks at how such a change affects Korean workers’ attitudes and their very identity.

 

Suicide Bay and Victory Hill are Tasmanian places with bloody histories and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) wants them replaced with Aboriginal words in the spirit of reconciliation.

The TAC has chosen 11 new names in palawa kani, the revived Tasmanian Aboriginal language, as dual and replacement names for sites around the state, under a proposal being put to the state’s Nomenclature Board.

Palawa kani language program co-ordinator Annie Reynolds said the TAC had carried out extensive consultation with the Aboriginal community, local councils and government representatives about the 11 proposed names.

Read on to find out more about the proposed changes and the importance of Aboriginal place names in Tasmania.

“Names have power,” writes Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein in a recent popular essay, “The Violence of Naming.” We identify ourselves by names: family names, nicknames, the surnames of our partners, pseudonyms, and more. These five essays, curated by Cheri Lucas Rowlands at the Discover blog, explore the ties we have (or don’t have) to our names, and the roles that they play in our evolving identities.

The essays are:

• “The Violence of Naming,” Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein
• “Call You By Your Name,” Roxanne Krystalli, Stories of Conflict and Love
• “Ain’t Nothing But a Family Thing,” Matt Miklic
• “How I Changed My Name,” Ellen Kittle, Stickler
• “The Mystery of Carl Miller,” Sarah Miller, Longreads

Parents in New South Wales are partial to members of the Royal family and famous authors when it comes to naming their children, according to the latest information on the state’s most popular names for newborns.

The State Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages has confirmed in 2016 data that parents tend to stick with the orthodox and leave avant-garde names to the celebrities. This time, Olivia has cracked the number one spot for newborn girls, alongside the boy’s title-holder since 2014, Oliver. William and Charlotte were ranked second in their gender lists in a nod to the Royal family. Read on for more details!

Czech carmaker Škoda has revealed the name of its new compact SUV, as reported by MotorBeam. The Škoda Karoq will replace the Yeti and will be positioned below the Kodiaq. The name and the spelling have been derived from the language of Alaska’s indigenous people. Known as the Alutiiq tribe who live there, car in their language is called ‘KAA’RAQ’ and arrow is known as ‘RUQ’. Interestingly, an arrow constitutes the central element of Škoda’s logo and this is how the words ‘KAA’RAQ’ became ‘Karoq’. Škoda states that it was very important for them to give their new SUV a powerful name and this was in line with the naming approach across their SUV models.

Arguments over what New York’s neighborhoods are called, where they start and end, and who has the right to say so are as old as the city itself. But the battles lately have become much more sophisticated. In this article in Crain’s, writer Joe Anuta reports on the conflict over what to call a section of Harlem, a delicate balancing act between the desires of developers and the need to respect the history of Harlem. This situation is also representative of naming issue in New York City in miniature.

On April 13th 2017, a special lecture addressing the effects of neurological damage on the naming of actions and objects was given by Dr. Bonnie Breining at Johns Hopkins University.  The lecture is a part of the C-Star Lecture Series offered by the Center for the Study of Aphasia Recovery. You can view a recording of the lecture here (or on the C-Star YouTube channel).

Deficits in Action and Object Naming: Evidence from Acute Stroke and Primary Progressive Aphasia

Neurological damage can result in selective deficits of naming for both objects and actions. However, assessment of individuals with aphasia often focuses on object naming, making it insensitive for detecting certain language deficits and patterns of recovery or worsening, as well as providing an incomplete view of the neural regions involved in naming. Furthermore, although dissociations have been observed both following stroke and as a result of neurodegenerative conditions such as primary progressive aphasia (PPA), results from the different etiologies are seldom compared directly.

In this talk, I discuss recent work investigating the neural substrates of object and action naming. Individuals with PPA and acute stroke were given the same assessments: the Boston Naming Test to evaluate object naming and the Hopkins Action Naming Assessment to evaluate action naming. We compare the patterns of impairment and the association between behavioral performance and damage to neural regions of interest in these individuals in order to develop a more comprehensive picture of the brain-behavior relationships critical for naming.