The American Name Society is pleased to share the ANS Winter 2024 Newsletter. There’s a lot of exciting news!
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:
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, 2024, 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 2023 (PDF)
Registration is open for ANS 2025, which will be held on February 22, 2025. You can register online via Eventbrite by clicking here or the following link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/american-name-society-annual-meeting-2025-tickets-1071828831889
You can also download this form and mail in a check.
The American Name Society Annual Meeting for 2025 will be held online using the Zoom platform. It is accessible via Mac or PC. The meeting will require a passcode, which will be sent via email to all registrants and presenters by February 21st.
We are working hard to set up a schedule that will work globally, and this means that some presenters will be scheduled at times outside of normal working hours.
The Book of Abstracts will be available before the conference.
Keep apprised of any changes to the annual meeting schedule here.
Registration is open for ANS 2025, which will be held on February 22, 2025. You can register online via Eventbrite by clicking here or the following link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/american-name-society-annual-meeting-2025-tickets-1071828831889
You can also download this form and mail in a check.
The American Name Society Annual Meeting for 2025 will be held online using the Zoom platform. It is accessible via Mac or PC. The meeting will require a passcode, which will be sent via email to all registrants and presenters by February 21st.
We are working hard to set up a schedule that will work globally, and this means that some presenters will be scheduled at times outside of normal working hours.
The Book of Abstracts will be available before the conference.
Keep apprised of any changes to the annual meeting schedule here.
The ANS will host a panel at the LSA 2025 conference, which will be held 9 to 12 January 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
an organized session at the 2025 annual meeting of the
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
9-12 January 2025
The American Name Society (ANS) is pleased to announce a panel that will be convened at the 2025 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), which will take place on 9-12 January 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a long-time sister society of the LSA, the ANS frequently held its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the LSA. This panel will celebrate the relationship between the two organizations with three papers on the theme of names and world-building.
The panel is titled “Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes,” and it features three papers on names and the fantasy genre of literature and Role Playing Games. The panel will be held on 10 January 2025 from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm in Franklin Hall 1 of the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. The papers in this session are:
Richard Janda (IU – Bloomington), “Tolkien’s vs. Rowling’s Names: Historical vs. Modern Reality; Elvish vs. Humorous Inventions”
Brandon Simonson (Boston University), “The Linguistic Function of Religious Names in the Creative World of Dungeons & Dragons”
Jean-Louis Vaxelaire (Université de Namur) and Marine Verriest (Université de Namur), “Theirastra and Gérard: Onomastic differences between two tabletop role-playing games (RPG)”
Registration for the 2025 LSA annual meeting is now open:
https://web.cvent.com/event/40d9411e-b965-4659-b9c3-63046eeed3d4/
For more information about the Linguistic Society of America, click here:
The Call for Papers described the session as such:
This session explores names and naming conventions in popular culture, especially personal names and place names that appear in works of literature, music, film, and games. Names convey meaning, but they also serve greater purposes of world-building in popular culture and its reception. Whether the names are of competing houses in A Game of Thrones, the lawless outer rim worlds in the Star Wars universe, or the vault-dwelling protagonists in the Fallout series, each name adds substance and meaning to the world for which it was created. Papers in this session organized by the American Name Society (a long-time sister society of the LSA) address the complex intersection between names and the worlds that they inhabit.
Download a PDF copy of the Call for Papers by clicking here.
For more information about the LSA 2025 conference, visit the LSA conference page here.
ANS Name of the Year Discussion and VoteREGISTRATION 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:
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, 2024, 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 2023 (PDF)
A recent study by Ancestry.com explores the most frequently occuring American surnames, compiling data gathered from phone books. ‘Smith’ emerges as the most common example by some considerable margin, topping the list in 40 states. Other popular surnames include Johnson, Miller, Jones, Williams, and Anderson.
A follow-up article by Newsweek dug deeper into the evidence and asked what this onomastic survey might tell us about America: the origins of many of these names, historic and modern patterns of immigration, and demographic variations across the country. Their article also includes a handy interactive map that lets you view the breakdown by state – explore away!
-T.K.A
Source: Pexels (Pexels Licence)
A new study by BabyCentre explores recent trends in baby naming.
US data suggests that the most popular baby names of 2024 so far are Noah and Olivia. Olivia has proved consistently popular in the US for some time, and has been among the top three female names since 2012. Interestingly, this is trend mirrored in much of the rest of the English-speaking word: Noah and Olivia are also the most popular baby names in both the UK and Canada (for the latest published data). Noah is also popular in Aotearoa, where the top female name is instead Charlotte. Australia, in contrast, is most fond of the names Oliver and Isla.
-T.K.A
Source: Pexels (shared under CC0)
Click here to download the Summer 2024 ANS Bulletin.
In this issue, you will find:
Ever thought about getting more involved with the American Name Society? Here is your opportunity! The American Name Society is currently looking for a few good people who are interested in joining the Executive Council. Starting in 2025, new officers will be needed to fill the positions listed below.
To apply for one or more of these Executive Council positions, please fill out the application form on this page.
The person elected to this position is primarily responsible for co-organizing the ANS annual conference in close cooperation with the ANS President. As conference co-chair, the person in this position will issue an official call for papers, organize a team of reviewers, design the program of paper presentations, and coordinate with the Linguistic Society of America and the other linguistic affiliates or “Sister Societies”: the American Dialect Society (ADS), the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL), the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the America (SSILA), The Association for Linguistic Evidence (TALE), and the North American Association for the History of Language Sciences (NAAHoLS). In addition to these duties, the VP also serves as a voting member of the Executive Council and, as such, is actively involved in the legislative process of the ANS. The person selected for this office has the option of running for the office of ANS President, at the end of his/her term. Candidates for this position are expected to have superior organizational, time-management, and communication skills.
The person elected to this position is principally responsible for organizing the ANS session at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association. This activity involves issuing a call for papers, assembling a team of abstract reviewers, selecting three authors whose work will be presented at the MLA conference, and coordinating the presentation of the three winning abstracts with the MLA administration. In addition to these duties, as a voting member of the ANS Executive Council (EC), the Allied Conference Coordinator participates in the legislative decision-making of the Society. Although the term of service for this position is for two years, the holder of this office may be re-elected pending approval by the EC. Given the fact that this position requires close communication with the MLA, candidates who have a demonstrated expertise in literary onomastics will receive preference.
The person elected to this position will serve as a voting member of the Executive Council (EC) and is expected to participate actively in the legislative decision-making involved in resolutions and motions placed before the EC. In addition to these duties, members-at-large serve on various auxiliary sub-committees to, for example, help with the nomination of new officers, coordination of the annual conference, and organization of allied conferences. Officers in this position can renew their term of service twice.
