This year’s conference dinner will be held in Clyde’s of Gallery Place located at 707 7th Street, NW, Washington, D.C.. Our group reservation is for 7pm on Saturday, January 9, 2016. If you have not already made your reservation for what promises to be a fun-filled evening, please contact our Treasurer, Michael McGoff: mmcgoff[@]binghamton.edu
About Names: All about Zachary, from Old Testament to U.S. president to actors
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. This recent column explores Zachary.
2016 Slate of Nominees for ANS Officers
The American Name Society is pleased to announce the 2016 Slate of Nominees for ANS Officer positions:
- Vice President: Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins, Louisiana Tech University, USA
- Allied Conference Coordinator*: Dr. Andreas Gavrielatos, University of Edinburgh, SCOTLAND
- Member-at-large: Dr. Jan Tent, University of Sydney, AUSTRALIA
- Membership Officer*: Ms.
New Book: Names and Naming – People, Places, Perceptions and Power
A new book, Names and Naming – People, Places, Perceptions and Power is scheduled to be released in February, 2016. This book is edited by Guy Puzey and Laura Kostanski. E-onomastics provides more information about the book.
Laura Ivanov and Sara-Joelle Clark of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will give a keynote speech at the ANS annual meeting in January.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. is one of the world’s premiere institutions for preserving the memory of the Holocaust and reminding current and future generations about the dangers of hatred and intolerance. The USHMM maintains one of the largest international research collections of historical artifacts documenting the crimes committed during the Nazi period.
The American Name Society is pleased to announce that one of the keynote speeches to take place during the annual conference in Washington, D.C. will be given by Laura Ivanov and Sara-Joelle Clark, who work in the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center of the USHMM.
Ivanov and Clark will be giving a talk entitled “Research and Preservation of Names at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”. During the presentation the experts will discuss the types of name based collections that are available at the museum. The presentation is a must-see for researchers and private citizens interested in learning more about international efforts to uncover and preserve the names of Shoah victims for all posterity.
The keynote is scheduled for Friday, January 8th, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm in Salon 14 of the of the Marriott Marquis.
See additional information on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.
Jacqueline Pata, Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians, will be a keynote speaker for the ANS annual meeting in January.
On the 9th of January, 2015, the Linguistic Society of America passed a landmark resolution calling for the immediate cessation of the all Native American names, nicknames, logos, and mascots in sport. The resolution is to respect and support the right of individual tribal nations to decide how to protect and celebrate their respective tribal heritages, including their right to control how their names will be used in public spaces.… Read More
Why You Shouldn’t Freak Out About Babies Named for Instagram Filters
Parents have started naming babies after Instagram filters, but we shouldn’t be concerned about the future of baby names. In an interview with Time, Dr. Cleveland Evans explains the nature of this new onomastic trend.
First Names and Family Names in the Context of the Law on Personal Names and Onomastics, Budapest, Hungary, December 10, 2015
On the 10th of December, 2015, an interdisciplinary workshop entitled “First Names and Family Names in the Context of the Law on Personal Names and Onomastics” will be held in Budapest, Hungary. The workshop is organized by the Department of Civil Law, Faculty of Law, Eötvös Loránd University.
Topics to be discussed include:
- the right to name and the Court of Justice of the European Union
- children’s right to their names
- current regulations and trends in first name choices in Hungary
- legal and linguistic issues involved in name changes in modern-day Hungary
- valid rules of entering names in Hungarian official registers
Talks will be given by academic scholars of Law and Linguistics as well as ministerial executives and public administrators. The language of the workshop is Hungarian and the conference program in available in Hungarian..
A piece of architectural and onomastic history in Budapest, Hungary
In Budapest, Hungary in the 1830s, in the square known today as Magyar jakobinusok tere, there once stood a two-story residential building with an elaborate tympanum decorated with a imposing statue of God creating the world. Inspired by this architectural detail, the German-speaking citizens of Budapest named the building Schöpfungshaus (‘Creation House’) and the street in front of it “Schöpfungs Gasse” (‘Creation Avenue’).… Read More
At Princeton, Woodrow Wilson, a Heralded Alum, Is Recast as an Intolerant One
Woodrow Wilson is perhaps best known as the 28th President of the United States. However, at Princeton University, the name of the Nobel Peace Prize winning politician from the Southern state of Virginia has begun to take on an additional association: racial discrimination.
The university’s Black Justice League has publicized the history of Wilson’s unwavering private and public support for racial segregation in the United States. According to leaders of the Princeton activists, this legacy of intolerance is not only an affront to minority students and staff, it also calls into question the appropriateness of university institutions continuing to carry the former President’s surname. Critics of the recent calls for on-campus name-changes are quick to remind, however, that the prestige which the university currently enjoys is due in no small measure to Wilson’s past leadership as one of the university’s early presidents.
According to an article appearing recently in the New York Times, the final decision over whether the names of certain campus mainstays such as the renowned “Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs” will undergo an onomastic make-over is in the hands of the University’s Board of Trustees. Although deleting the name Wilson will not right the wrongs done during the Wilsonian period, the discussion may well help current generations to appreciate the importance of protecting the civil rights which so many gave their lives to secure.