“Don’t Call Me Grandma!” Baby Boomers and Grandparent Names

“”The Favorite” – Grandfather and Grandson” by Georgios Iakovidis (Image: Public Domain)

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, author Beth DeCarbo explores the grandparent naming trend popular amongst Baby Boomers: alternatives to “Grandma” and “Grandpa”. Due to a myriad of reasons, many grandparents are choosing alternatives to traditional English grandparent names, such as the Swedish “Mormor” (mother’s mother) and “Morfar” (mother’s father).

ANS President Laurel Sutton was interviewed in the article, as DeCarbo writes:

“Some names are just easier for little kids to pronounce,” says Laurel Sutton, a linguist and president of the American Name Society, a nonprofit devoted to onomastics, the study and history of names and naming practices. Distinctive names are also helpful when children have multiple grandmothers and/or live in a multigenerational household, Sutton adds. Besides, “many people like to have pet names, coming up with something a little more personal,” Sutton says. “Identity is becoming a far more open, flexible thing.”

Call for Papers, Special Issue: “Towards a neurodiverse sociocultural linguistics”

Call for Papers, Special Issue: “Towards a neurodiverse sociocultural linguistics”

Editors Ayden Parish and Kira Hall

Neurodiversity, understood as the range of human cognitive and neurological variance, has been classically marginalized as only of interest through a medicalized, pathologizing lens. The neurodiversity movement, however, advocates that these differences should not be seen as biomedical entities to be first and foremost cured, but as variation to be accommodated and as lived experiences whose perspectives should be recognized and valued. Across the social sciences, neurodiversity-affirming approaches have come to demonstrate that a sociocultural angle is necessary, both in order to improve theorization of neurodiverse conditions and also to bring a new critical eye to current theories that only account for normative relationships with language and sociality. Crucially, these critiques make important steps in asserting the agency of neurodivergent individuals. We hope to further enrich these discussions with specific attention to sociocultural linguistics as a site for neurodiverse intervention.

We invite papers for a special topics issue on neurodiversity to be submitted to Language in Society. Our aim is to demonstrate the necessity of incorporating neurodiversity into the study of language in social life and to showcase the productive new directions engendered by such approaches. We welcome a broad vision of neurodiversity that includes not only neurodevelopmental disabilities such as autism, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome, but also other neurological conditions like dementia and aphasia, as well as mental illnesses, including but not limited to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and OCD.

We are interested in papers from a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, including linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, socially-oriented discourse analysis, crip linguistics and related perspectives, among others. Possible topics include:

Analyses of interactions amongst neurodiverse speakers
Ethnographic approaches to language and embodiment in neurodiverse communities
Discourse analytical approaches to the construction of neurodiversity and neurotypicality
Critical reframings of traditionally pathologized linguistic behaviors such as echolalia or “disorganized” speech
Other creative, socially-oriented approaches to the intersection of neurodiversity and linguistics

We are especially interested in hearing from early career scholars and those examining neurodiversity’s intersections with race, gender, sexuality, and other disabilities.

If you are interested in submitting a paper to the special issue, please email an abstract of up to 500 words by January 8th to the editors. Full drafts of selected papers will be due in May of 2024. Please feel free to write the editors with any inquiries: Ayden Parish (ayden.parish@colorado.edu) and Kira Hall (kira.hall@colorado.edu).

About Names: Dr. Evans on the name “Mary”

Mary Todd Lincoln, former First Lady of the United States of America (Photo: public domain)

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his December 3rd column, he discusses the name “Mary”.

Today is my younger sister Mary Elizabeth Evans Elliott’s birthday. I won’t get into trouble telling how old she is, but it’s a milestone ending in “0”.

Mary’s the English form of Latin Maria, derived from Hebrew Miriam, name of Moses’s sister in the Old Testament. No one really knows Miriam’s meaning. Because Mara means “bitter” in Hebrew, “bitter sea” used to be a common guess. Today “longed-for child” (ma-râma) is thought a more likely Hebrew meaning. However, since most experts now think Moses was an Egyptian name, many believe Miriam’s from Egyptian mry, “beloved.”

Mary is revered by Christians as the name of Jesus’s mother. Six other Marys are mentioned in the New Testament, including Mary Magdalene and Mary, sister of the resurrected Lazarus.

Mary was rare in medieval Britain. Most thought it too sacred to give a daughter. The first known example was Mary, daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland and his English wife Margaret, born in 1082.

In 1380 Mary ranked 49th in England. It only became common after the Reformation. Though one might think Mary I (r.1553-1558), called “Bloody Mary” for her persecution of Protestants, along with Puritan disdain for what they saw as Roman Catholic “idolatry” of the Virgin Mary, would make the name unpopular, all those New Testament Marys prevailed. Mary, second to Elizabeth after 1600, reached No. 1 during the 1650s, when radical Puritan Oliver Cromwell ruled.

In the 19th century Mary’s popularity was overwhelming. The 1850 United States census found 1,352,362 Marys — 13.5% of all girls and women, nearly one out of seven. In Britain in 1851, it was 16.6%, or one out of six. It’s hard to imagine what life was like when multiple Marys of all ages lived on every street in town.

In 1880, when Social Security’s yearly data starts, 7.24% of newborn girls were named Mary. Though the percentage steadily decreased, Mary stayed No. 1 until 1947, when Linda displaced it. In 2022, Mary only ranked 136th, its lowest in 700 years.

It’s surprising Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) was the only sitting President’s wife named Mary. Two others were acting first ladies — Mary McElroy (1841-1917) for widowed brother Chester Arthur (1881-1885), and Mary Harrison McKee (1858-1930) for father Benjamin Harrison after mother Caroline’s death in October 1892.

“Mary is a Grand Old Name” was written by George M. Cohan for musical “Forty-five Minutes to Broadway,” which debuted Jan. 1, 1906.

Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Mary”!

Registration opens for the 2024 ANS Conference, Online, February 17, 2024

The first ANS 2024 Annual Conference will be held online, using Zoom, Saturday February 17, 2024. This one-day event will feature presentations from 16 scholars, as well as updates on the ANS and a report on the Name of the Year Discussion.

The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to attend! Each attendee must fill out this form and pay separately.

Detailed information for attendees, along with the book of abstracts, will be sent in January.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

The schedule will be available as soon as possible.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Registration opens for the 2024 ANS Conference, Online, February 17, 2024

The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to attend! Each attendee must fill out this form and pay separately.

Detailed information for attendees, along with the book of abstracts, will be sent in January.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

The schedule will be available as soon as possible.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Call for Papers: 2023 ANS Emerging Scholar Award

In 2007, the American Name Society established the ANS Emerging Scholar Award (ANSESA) to recognize the outstanding scholarship of an early career onomastics researcher. This special distinction is given to a new scholar whose work is judged by a panel of onomastic researchers to be of superior academic quality. This year’s selection committee is made up of Dr. Jan Tent, the 2023 ANSESA Committee Chair; Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins; and Dr. Andreas Gavrielatos.

Recipients of this prestigious award receive the following:

a cash prize of $250 US dollars
one year of membership in the ANS
public announcements on the NAMES and ANS websites
a profile in the ANS newsletter, to be written by the Chair of the ANSESA Committee

Award recipients are encouraged to submit their manuscripts for publication in NAMES. The Selection Committee reserves the right to refrain from giving this award in those years in which no submission is deemed to have met the above-mentioned requirements.

Application Guidelines

To be considered for this award, applicants must submit the full text of their paper by midnight (E.S.T.), the 15th of December 2023, to this year’s ANSESA Chair, Dr. Jan Tent (<jan.tent@mq.edu.au>). Submissions must be sent as an email attachment in either a .doc or .docx format. For ease of processing, please be sure to include the keyword “ESA2023” in the subject line of your email.

Submission Requirements

All submissions must be prepared according to the guidelines provided at <https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/guidelines>. Authors must use the formatting rules listed in the official Style Sheet of Names, the journal of the American Name Society. The Style Sheet is available at the journal website: <https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/StyleSheet>. Submissions will not only be judged upon the quality of the writing and the scientific merit of the submission presented, but also on their adherence to these formatting regulations. NOTE: The main text should be no more than 5,000 words, excluding the endnotes, bibliography, graphics, and any supplementary material.

Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for the ANSESA, applicants must be an entry-level professional, an untenured academic, or a student. Applicants must have had their single-authored abstract accepted for presentation at the ANS annual conference and be a member of the ANS. Previously published papers are not eligible for consideration. However, papers based on unpublished theses or dissertations are eligible. The ANSESA Selection Committee will judge all submissions for their methodological soundness, innovation, and potential contribution to the field of onomastics. Although past recipients of the ANSESA are eligible to re-apply for an entirely new piece of scholarship, preference may be given to first-time applicants. Please direct questions to this year’s ANSESA Committee Chair, ANS Vice President, Dr. Jan Tent (<jan.tent@mq.edu.au>).

A PDF download of this call can be found here.

Upcoming Symposium: International Symposium on Place Names 2025 (September 2025)

From Chrismi Loth:

International Symposium on Place Names 2025
Short Title: ISPN 2025

Date: 01-Sep-2025 – 30-Sep-2025
Location: Clarens, South Africa
Contact: Chrismi Loth
Contact Email: kongresETFB@ufs.ac.za

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

Theme: Harmonising toponymic heritage: balancing standardisation and local diversity
Dates: To be confirmed

About the ISPN (from the ISPN 2023 home page):

“The vision of the International Symposium on Place Names series is to advance research on place names and to provide a platform for international collaboration in this regard. As such, in addition to the symposium, a related workshop usually directly precedes the symposium.”

Registration opens for the 2024 ANS Conference, Online, February 17, 2024

The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to attend! Each attendee must fill out this form and pay separately.

Detailed information for attendees, along with the book of abstracts, will be sent in January.

You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.

The schedule will be available as soon as possible.

For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.

Registration Open: ANS Name of the Year Discussion and Vote (Virtual, 4 January 2024)

ANS Name of the Year Discussion and Vote

REGISTRATION is now open! Click here to register for the discussion and vote.

Join us for our annual Name of the Year discussion! We will be nominating, discussing, and voting on eligible names in the following categories:

Personal Names: Names of groups or individuals, including nicknames, given names, surnames, or a combination of these.
Place Names: Names or nicknames of any real geographical locations (e.g., rivers, lakes, mountains, streets, buildings, regions, countries, etc.).
Brand Names: Names of commercial products, companies, organizations, and businesses (both for-profit and non-profit). This category includes personal names used as brands for commerce.
Artistic/Literary Names: Names of fictional persons, places, or institutions, in any written, oral, or visual medium (e.g., titles of art or musical works, books, plays, tv programs, movies, games, etc.).
E-Names: Names of online platforms, websites, and movements, as well as hashtags, usernames, etc.
Miscellaneous Names: Names that do not fit in any of the above five categories.

The discussion will be conducted by Laurel Sutton, ANS President and Name of the Year Coordinator.

If you have not done so already, you can nominate names via this form

Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2023, at midnight Pacific.

Tickets to this event are free!

The URL to our Zoom room will be sent to everyone who registers for this event.

Please review previous Name of the Year reports, to better understand the type of names that will be accepted:

Name of the Year Report 2022 (PDF)

Name of the Year Report 2021 (PDF)

***

Our first conference of the year will take place February 17, 2024, over Zoom. It will be a one day event. More details, including the price of attendance, will be available soon!

Call for Papers: 3rd International Scientific Conference “ONOMASTIC INVESTIGATIONS” (University of Latvia, 9-10 May 2024)

CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd International Scientific Conference “ONOMASTIC INVESTIGATIONS”.

Latvian Language Institute (University of Latvia) invites to participate in the 3rd International Scientific Conference “Onomasticinvestigations”. Conference will be held at the University of Latvia on May 9–10, 2024. The conference is dedicated to our colleague Ojārs Bušs (1944–2017) who would have celebrated his 80th anniversary on April 28, 2024. The theme of the conference is “Variability of proper names.” We invite you to submit paper topics that address an area of research relevant the variability of place and personal names, as well as other proper names. We invite to look at their changes and changing processes, both in time and in perception, and under theinfluence of linguistic and extralinguistic factors.

Working languages: Latvian, English, German.

Duration of presentation: 20 minutes.

Please submit the application form and the abstract of your presentation (2500-3000 characters with spaces) by 15 January 2024 online: https://lavi.lu.lv/onomastikas-petijumu-anketa/

Abstracts, regardless of the language of the presentation, must be submitted in English.

The notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent by 1 March 2024.

After positive peer-review, articles based on the presentations will be published in the journal of the conference “Onomastic InvestigationsIII”.

Participation fee:

EUR 80 (paid by 20 March 2024) or EUR 90 (after 20 March 2024) for presenter;

EUR 60 (paid by 20 March 2024) or EUR 65 (after 20 March 2024) for each co-author participating in the conference.

Participation fee includes:

for presenters and co-authors participating in the conference – a certificate of participation, participant’s materials, technical support at theconference and for the journal of the conference, rights to submit an article, coffee breaks, copy of the author of the journal of theconference.

Scientific Commitee
Dr. philol. Laimute Balode
Mg. hum. Anna Elizabete Griķe
Dr. habil. philol. Irēna Ilga Jansone
Dr. philol. Sanda Rapa
Dr. philol. Renāte Siliņa-Piņķe
Dr. philol. Anta Trumpa

Organizing Commitee
Mg. paed. Gunita Arnava
Mg. hum. Ieva Auziņa
Mg. hum. Anna Elizabete Griķe
Bc. hum. Laura Paula Jansone
Mg. hum. Agita Kazakeviča
Mg. hum. Sintija Ķauķīte
Elīna Ķēniņa
Mg. hum. Anete Ozola
Bc. hum. Odrija Ratfeldere
Mg. hum. Marita Silkāne
Mg. hum. Ilze Štrausa

For more information about the conference, including bank transfer details for the fee, visit: https://lavi.lu.lv/en/conferences-2024/

E-mail: onomastikaspetijumi@gmail.com