Upon marriage Japan’s current legislation forces a couple to decide on a single family name. While the law does allow for either partner’s name to be chosen, in more than 95% of the cases, the wife changes to her new husband’s last name. However, this tradition may soon see a change.

Japan’s Supreme Court recently announced that starting in November 2015, it will be re-examining the constitutionality of the current surname laws. This court review comes on the heels of claimant demands that they be allowed to select separate last names despite being married. The legal question which the court will have to answer is whether having different surnames in marriage is a right guaranteed by the constitution.

For more information, in Japanese, from the Nikkei financial newspaper, click here.

The Northern Territory in Australia is lobbying to become an official state by the year 2018. As a part of the effort, residents are searching for a befitting new name for what they hope will be Australia’s seventh state.

One of the top candidates is Wonderland. With Alice Springs as the capital, this state name would allow for the whimsical word play “Alice in Wonderland”.

Other popular onomastic nominees include “State of Kate”, in honor of Kate Middleton, and “State of Evolution”, a name inspired by the famous Australian toponym Darwin, which took its moniker from the surname of the revolutionary scientist, Charles Darwin.

For other place name suggestions currently under consideration, click here.

What do you call a narrow, virtually hidden stream which trickles along a densely green moor? What about the name of the shadows that are cast against the moorland clouds as they drift across the blue sky on a windy day?

In Irish Gaelic, these two natural events have been given specific names: caochan and rionnach maoim.

As writer Robert Macfarlane explains in a recent Guardian article, the Gaelic language is filled with such dazzling onomastic treasures. Unfortunately, in a world preoccupied with mirco-blogging, bookmarking, and media-sharing, many people have forgotten what real twitter sounds like or what pirr, the Shetlandic name for the light touch of wind that dances upon the skin, feels like.

In a growing plea to preserve these names and rediscover these experiences, Macfarlane and others are lobbying for “rewilding” the language we use to describe the non-virtual world around us. Click here  for an editorial that explains more about this movement.

In Tartu, Estonia, along the Emajõgi riverbank, a naming controversy has erupted over a new street name. After spending what many felt was an exorbitant amount of money for a lawyer to develop a name for the new thoroughfare, residents of the once nameless street were horrified by the solicitor’s final toponymic suggestion: Madruse. It translates into ‘The Sailors’ in English.

As defenders of the street name explain, the proposal has to be seen in the geographic context. In a neighborhood where other streets are named Kapteni ‘The Capitans’ and Lootsi ‘The (River) Pilots’, the quaint name ‘The Sailors’ would fit right in.

However, residents of the street complain that the comparatively low nautical status of sailors relative to that of marine positions immortalized in the neighboring street names constitutes a collective insult. While officials might have been willing to overlook that perceived slight, the fact that the street name has become the butt of many jokes throughout the nation has led the government to conclude that the name Madruse has to go. The search is now on to find a new street name.

This is not the first time that fights have arisen in Estonia over who gets the most prestigious name. In another neighborhood where the streets are named after regal birds of prey such as Kotka, ‘The Eagle’, residents living on ‘Duck Street’ say their street name is simply humiliating and they would prefer the name Kondori or ‘The Condors’.

For more on this controversy, in Estonian, click here.

Nike recently announced that it is officially changing the name of one of its sneakers. Previously known as Zenji, the Nike footwear has been re-named Juvenate. The reason for the name change is that the original name was dangerously close to an Arabic slur that is as offensive as the English “N-word.” According to Nike representatives, company officials were completely unaware of the similarity and had chosen the z-word to describe the zen-like state of comfort the sneaker provides. True to their word, buyers who go to the Nike website and type in the old name will be automatically brought to the Juvenate webpage.

Click here for additional information.