After conducting extensive market research and spending more than $300,000 in private funding, the proposal was made to change the former name of The Seattle Public Library to the new and improved name: Seattle Public Libraries. The suggested change involved changing the word-final “y” to “ies”…oh and the “The” was to be dropped as well. In light of the fact that implementing this re-branding would cost several hundred thousand more, many Seattleites reacted less than enthusiastically to the proposed name change. After much deliberation, the Library’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously against the proposed re-branding.
Names and Food
If you are a name watcher and a food lover, here are a few interesting / maddening / humbling / irritating links for you:
Washington Post journalist Christopher Ingraham challenges readers to name a food “just by looking at where it comes from” as indicated by a series of dots on a map of the United States.
The Daily Meal lists the top ten most commonly misspelled food names.
Discover Huffington Post’s list of commonly mispronounced food names. And yes, that brown UK steak sauce in on the list!
Reminder: Emerging Scholar Award Submissions DUE 11/16/15
Reminder: Emerging Scholar Award Submissions are due Monday, November 16, 2015.
Presenters for the 2016 ANS Conference who are eligible for and interested in applying for the ANS Emerging Scholar Award (ESA), should have received all pertinent information.
Please send submissions to the chair of this year’s ANS-ESA Selection Committee, Lisa Radding: raddinglisa [ @ ] gmail.com.… Read More
The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland (SNSMI) Conference, Maynooth, Ireland, April 15-18, 2016
The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland (SNSMI) will be holding its 25th annual Spring Conference from the 15th to the 18th of April 2016 at Maynooth University, a part of the National University of Ireland. Located on the outskirts of Dublin, access to the Maynooth campus is easily accessible from the Dublin Airport. In addition to the main conference, the event organizers will also be hosting a special postgraduate workshop.
The deadline for registration is the 15th of November 2015. Researchers interested in presenting a paper on personal or place naming are asked to email their title and abstract to submissions to confsec at snsbi.org.uk.
International Conference on Cartography and Geoinformation Science (ICCGIS), Montreal, Canada, May 16-17, 2016
The 18th annual International Conference on Cartography and Geoinformation Science (ICCGIS) will be held from the 16th to the 17th of May 2016 in Montreal, Canada.
For this cross-disciplinary event, researchers interested in place names are invited to submit an abstract for possible presentation. Suggested topics of interest include toponyms on maps and GeoDB as well as the general and derivate aspects of cartography and toponymy. The deadline for paper submission is the 16th of November 2015. For more on the event, use the following link: https://www.waset.org/conference/2016/05/montreal/ICCGIS/call-for-papers
Squaw Island officially renamed Unity Island
In a historic decision that many Native American and women’s activists are calling long overdue, New York lawmakers have voted to finally put an end to the place name “Squaw Island.”
Originally called “Divided Island” or “Deyowenoguhdoh” by the indigenous nation of the Senecas in homage to a creek that transects the land, the island was re-named by French explorers in the 17th century. In place of the now pejorative moniker, the Island will now be called “Unity Island” of Ga’nigo:i:yoh, a name which government officials and tribal leaders agree reflects the spirit of mutual respect that now typifies the modern community’s shared core values.
For more information, see this article and this article.
eBay hosts moth-naming auction
What do you call a grey-green moth that weighs less than on ounce, measures approximately an inch in length, and frequents the White Sands National Park in New Mexico? That was the question which entomologist, Eric Metzler, asked the general public this past October.
In a novel attempt to raise funds for the Western National Parks Association (WNPA), Metzler generously auctioned off the right to name his newly discovered species to the highest eBay bidder and donated the proceeds to the WNPA. According to eBay, the auction ended on the 23rd of October with the winning bid reaching an astounding $12,600.
We don’t know the name yet. It can take as long as year for the Latinized name to be officially registered by the Commission of Zoological Nomenclature. Stay tuned.
For more information, see this article and this article.
About Names: German surname Luther takes hold in America
The Luther Burger
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. This week’s column explores Luther.
PARSEME General Meeting, Struga, Macedonia, April 7-8, 2016
PARSEME is the acronym given to a scholarly network of scientists dedicated to the investigation of parsing and multi-word expressions.
From the 7th to the 8th of April 2016, this organization will be holding its 6th General Meeting in Struga, Macedonia. Lexicography researchers and language technology experts from 30 member countries are invited to submit poster proposals by the 30th of November 2015.… Read More
Conference on Hebrew and Yiddish in Contemporary Education and Culture, Saint Petersburg, Russia, June 27-30 2016
From the 27th to the 30th of June 2016, the Department of Jewish Culture at Saint Petersburg University in Russia will be holding a conference on Hebrew and Yiddish in Contemporary Education and Culture. The aim of this 2nd international conference is to provide researchers specializing in Yiddish or Hebrew Studies a forum for sharing their findings and experience.… Read More