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.

event-1719The 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.

filed under ANS Conference 2016, Member News

4758464068_3b9ffaefd2_mOn 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

First Names and Family Names in the Context of the Law on Personal Names and Onomastics, Budapest, Hungary, December 10, 2015

3044867827_6e619a0f80_mOn 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

filed under About Names

8130435985_d99d647d2c_mIn 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

2872022732_7b77a4f62c_mWoodrow 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.

Research showing female-named storms seen as less threatening ‘worth considering’

16299823153_065be21e7e_mABS news Australia recently reported that meteorologists down under are re-considering the tradition of bestowing storms male and female names. According to Alan Sharp who manages the tropical cyclone warning services for Australia, questions have been raised in response to American researchers’ findings that storms bearing female names may be taken less seriously than storms carrying male names. Whether or not the decades of results gathered by American investigators working within Gender Studies, Psychology, and Statistics actually apply to Australia has not yet been demonstrated.

Based on work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this assertion is to be taken quite seriously. As reported in an article from the Washington Post, some research indicates that simply “changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley […] to Eloise[…] could nearly triple its death toll.” These findings are important for risk management.

Conference called “Seafaring: An Early Medieval Conference on the Islands of the North Atlantic”, Denver, Colorado, November 3-5, 2016

3191479019_0644809dfc_mThe Department of English of the University of Denver will be hosting a special conference called “Seafaring: An Early Medieval Conference on the Islands of the North Atlantic” from the 3rd to the 5th of November, 2016. Abstracts for the conference for sessions, seminars, workshops/forums are now being accepted.

Scientists whose work deals with naming and the cross-cultural and/or multi-linguistic relationships among people of the North Atlantic are encouraged to submit an abstract. The Medieval Association of Place and Space (MAPS) can provide more information on that event and on other events of potential interest to researchers working on cartography, geography, and onomastics.