Boing Boing reports that “the Reykjavík City Council has approved a citizen-led effort to rename a street Svarthöfði, translated as Blackhead, which is the Icelandic name for Darth Vader.”
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The Structure of University Names
Names have linguistic structure. For more about the syntax of university names, see this article, published by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
California’s infamous fires earn names
For the past four years, residents of California have been battling one of the most severe droughts in the state’s history. As a result, California is currently witnessing one of the worst fire seasons ever.
From July into August, firefighters found themselves battling a fire system named the “Rocky Fire” which burned almost 70 thousand acres of land. In general, fires are named after the area where they are believed to have started.
Other infamous California fires that have earned official names include:
- the 2012 Rush Fire
- the Cedar Fire of 2003
One of the worst wildfires in California history, the Cedar Fire is also known by two names that express its devastating size: Fire Siege of 2003 and 2003 Firestorm.
Popular Japanese kanji name characters of 2014
In Japan, last year was the “Year of the Horse”. As a result, many of the most popular boys’ names for 2014 included the kanji character for horse, for example,駿, 悠馬 .
Topping the list of most popular kanji characters used for boys’ names in 2014 was 蓮 or “ren” which means “sacred lotus”. Amongst the girls’ names, one of the most commonly appearing characters was 凛, which according to Japan Today means “dignified” and “gallant”.
See this article and this article for more information.
Australia’s Blacktown debates name change
According to some historians, the Sydney, Australia suburb of Blacktown earned its name from Black Town Road, the route leading to an institute where Aboriginal children were forcibly sent to so-called “Native Institute” for “education”. For this reason, many feel that the name is a painful reminder of Australian segregationist past and should therefore be changed.… Read More
Help Map America’s Best/Worst Pun Business Names
Digg and Atlas Obscura are crowd-sourcing a map of best and worst business pun names… Submit your nominations here! Nominations close September 7th.
Ashley Madison hackers publish list of names
This month users of the Dark Web were given the personal names (and intimate details) of millions of people who availed themselves of the net services provided by Ashley Madison (AM), a website devoted to help husbands and wives find that special someone else for an illicit affair. According to AM executives, the roster of customer names was stolen and released by an expert group of hackers who named themselves, the “Impact Team”.… Read More
Global WordNet Conference, Bucharest, Romania, January 27-30 2016
From the 27th to the 30th of January 2016, the 8th annual Global WordNet Conference (GWC) will be held in Bucharest, Romania. Organized by the Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence “Mihai Drăgănescu” of the Romanian Academy and the Global WordNet Association, this conference offers an international forum for discussing the latest research on wordnets.
Researchers and developers who are interested in presenting a paper are invited to visit the GWC website. The deadline for submission is September 6th, 2015.
Couple with the last name Avatar banned from Facebook
Facebook recently deleted the pages of Balizar Orion Avatar and his wife Audry Avatar because their last name is a word Facebook has flagged as being a likely suspicious or fake account. See this article for more on this modern onomastic controversy.
ANS conference acceptance notification by September 30th.
The ANS Abstract Review Committee is encouraged by the quality of work submitted this year. Stay tuned for notification of acceptance by September 30th.