How Harvard Should Think about Renaming

A couple of weeks ago, University President Lawrence S. Bacow convened a committee to articulate “general principles” for renaming spaces, programs, and professorships that are connected to “abhorrent” activities at Harvard. At a base level, everyone is pleased that President Bacow has taken this necessary and overdue step. Yet, for now, it raises a set of compelling philosophical and procedural questions: What should they rename? And how will they know?

The starting point should be obvious. While the University has numerous stains on its long history, slavery and scientific racism remain the tip of the abhorrence iceberg — from the slave trader who helped found their law school, to Harvard’s ownership of daguerreotypes portraying enslaved individuals. Names affiliated with white supremacy and its atrocities should be the first to go. Then…

How Denver got its name

Colorado’s capital is named after James W. Denver (1817-1892), a 19th-century Renaissance man who served in Congress, fought in the United States Army, and served as Governor of the Kansas Territory.

In November 1858, while Denver was still serving as territorial governor, William Larimer, Jr., a land speculator from Leavenworth, planted the townsite of “Denver City” along the South Platte River in Arapaho County in western Kansas Territory (the present-day state of Colorado). Larimer chose the name “Denver” to honor the current territorial governor with the intention that the city would be chosen as the county seat of Arapaho County. Denver retired as territorial governor in November 1858 and was reappointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs, serving until his resignation on March 31, 1859.

He only visited his namesake city twice, in 1875 and 1882, and was reportedly unhappy that the residents didn’t give him more of a hero’s welcome.

About Names: Jack’s reach has stretched from nursery rhymes to literary heroes

By Fox Fisher - https://instagram.com/p/9JSSulhigl/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44467471

British food writer, journalist and activist Jack Monroe (Fox Fisher, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his October 25th column, he looks at the history of the name Jack.

Jack is an English nickname for John. In medieval England, “-kin” was common in nicknames, such as Wilkin and Adkin, from William and Adam. John led to Jankin, which became Jackin and then Jack. It’s possible confusion with Jacques, the French form of James, was also involved. By 1350, though, the English linked Jack to John, not James.

Around 1380, a third of Englishmen were named John. With so many Jacks, “jack” soon meant “common servant,” or any mechanical device doing servants’ work. By 1560, Jack Sprat was a skinny man. Jack and Jill have tumbled down hills since 1765. In 1660s Britain, a Jack-o’-lantern was a night watchman; in the United States, it became a candle-lit, carved Halloween pumpkin around 1834.

In 1996, Jack was back in Social Security’s top hundred. It peaked at 34th in 2005. That new popularity is exemplified by Omaha-based singing duo Jack & Jack (Gilinsky and Johnson), both born in 1996.

Then the American love of two syllable forms caused Jackson to explode to the No. 1 status it’s held since 2013. Between 2006 and 2015, Jack receded as Jackson boomed. Since 2017, as parents tire of Jackson, Jack has surged 10%. The 9,393 born last year ranked it 27th on my “combined spellings” list, beating John as an official name for the first time ever.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Jacks in history!

Holocaust Education Week lecture explores discrimination based on names

The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University will host an event on November 3 2020 that explores how Nazis used names to fulfill Hitler’s genocidal vision.

The event runs during 2020 Holocaust Education Week and features a lectures with guest presenter Iman Nick on “Hitler’s Lists: How the Nazis Used Names to Spawn the Holocaust.” It runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Zoom.

Even before the infamous Yellow Star, the Nazis devised a simple yet effective method to pinpoint victims for wide-spread discrimination, marginalization, relocation, deportation and finally extermination. Using first-hand accounts from Holocaust survivors and documents unearthed from the once secret files of the Nazi Party, this lecture tells the story of how personal names were used to fulfill Hitler’s genocidal vision. The talk will also present modern-day examples in which something as seemingly innocuous as a person’s name has been used to carry out crimes against humanity.

Register online here to join the virtual event.

Canadian Town of Asbestos chooses new name: Val-des-Sources

 

Residents had until Sunday night to vote in a ranked-choice referendum among six options: L’Azur-des-Cantons, Jeffrey-sur-le-Lac, Larochelle, Phénix, Trois-Lacs and Val-des-Sources. Val-des-Sources won 51.5 per cent on the third ballot.

Asbestos, a town of over 7,000 in the Eastern Townships, was once known mainly for the large Jeffrey mine that extracted the toxic mineral, but it chose to rebrand as the name was seen as an impediment to foreign investment.

The town had proposed a list of four new names in September, but criticism of that list led to a new one with six names announced earlier this month.

There were 2,796 ballots counted in total, Mayor Hugues Grimard announced in a special meeting broadcast on Facebook.

How Cleveland got its name

Cleveland takes its name from General Moses Cleaveland, a surveyor and investor for the Connecticut Land Company who led the first group to settle in the area in 1796. Cleaveland oversaw the planning of the early town, then headed back to Connecticut a few months later and never returned to the town that bears his name.

It’s not exactly clear when the first “a” in his surname got dropped from the city’s name, but one story explains that in 1830 the Cleveland Advertiser was pressed for space on its headline and simply axed the “a.” The change caught on, and the town became known as Cleveland.

The Goulbourn Museum announced a new series “WHAT’S IN A NAME”

Goulbourn Museum shares the story of Ottawa’s oldest military settlement and early life in the former Goulbourn Township. Located just south of Stittsville in Ottawa’s west end, Goulbourn Museum houses a diverse collection of artefacts and interactive exhibitions.

The Museum is excited to announce a new series “WHAT’S IN A NAME”. In this series Museum staff will explore the story behind names that appear throughout Goulbourn Township. Their first topic: A Transparent Look at Sir Henry Goulburn and Slavery.

Staff are actively conducting research and gathering knowledge and diverse perspectives on the subject of Sir Henry Goulburn. They are looking forward to sharing the results of their research and hosting an in-depth discussion.

“ATLASES IN TIME” ICA Joint Commission Workshop, Madrid 22-24 April 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As with most conferences in corona times, the organisers decided to postpone this Joint Commission Conference until April 2021.

Form Wednesday 22 April to Saturday 24 April 2021 the ICA Commission on Atlases, the Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy, the National Geographic Institute (IGN) and the Spanish Society of Cartography, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (SECFT) will jointly host a symposium on atlases and toponymy im Madrid (Spain).

Toponymy helps tackle this issue and can help us also understand the symbolic power of place names, especially their role in space-related identity construction that reflects historic and recent power relations between dominant and non-dominant groups. Thus place names, their specification and selection are important and scientifically indicative ingredients of maps and, intrinsically, atlases.

Book Review: “A History of Jewish Name Changing in America”

Read review of the Kirsten Fermaglich’ book by Beth DiNatale Johnson. Kirsten Fermaglich’s groundbreaking work on Jewish name changing recasts popular perceptions of this long-standing practice in the twentieth-century United States.

In emphasizing the significance of names, Fermaglich astutely uses the book’s title as a prelude to her dismantling of the legal, historical, and social layers associated with the process of name changing, as discussed in each of the book’s six chronological chapters. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name alludes to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet declares “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet, in her monologue, suggests that Romeo’s surname, Montague, should play no obstacle in their love story. Yet, as Fermaglich argues, names do convey important information about family, culture, and class that can have significant effects on people’s lives. As such, the book’s objective is to “recover the struggles of ordinary men, women, and children in a world that judged them for their names”. A Rosenberg by Any Other Name convincingly examines the enhanced social currency American Jews have experienced when they changed their last, and to a lesser extent, first names, while also revealing that such decisions often came at the expense of interpersonal relations and psychological turmoil.