Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced their daughter’s Chinese name: Chen Mingyu. While the first part of the name was taken from Zuckerberg’s mother-in-law, the the second is composed of the words: “ming” for bright and “yu” for universe. The tiny internet heiress’s English name, “Maxima” was reportedly chosen to honor Zuckerberg’s side of the family.
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Call for Nominations for the Adam Kilgarriff Prize
In association with the electronic lexicography (e-Lex) conference series, the Adam Kilgarriff Prize, is being offered to young scholars working within the areas of corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and lexicography. The prize consists of a monetary award of 2,500 Euros. Winners will be invited to give a special lecture at the e-Lex conference in 2017. The deadline for nominations is the 30th of September 2016.
LEXICOM workshop, Vienna, Austria, July 11-15, 2016
From the 11th to the 15th of July 2016, LEXICOM 2016, a five-day intensive workshop of lexicography, corpus linguistics, and lexical computing will be held in Vienna, Austria. Registration for this event will begin on March 15, 2016.
Dene (Athabaskan) Language Conference, Fairbanks, Alaska, June 6-7, 2016
The University of Alaska Fairbanks will be holding the Dene (Athabaskan) Language Conference from the 6th to the 7th of June 2016. The event will take place at the Explorer Hotel, in downtown Yellowknife. Bringing together linguists, language learners, educators, and language activists, this conference is one of the world’s most important for the student of Athabaskan languages. The theme for this year’s conference is “Language and History” with a special session on “Standardization and Variation”. The deadline for abstract submission is March 14, 2016.
18th International Conference on Lexicography and Discourse Prosody, Venice, Italy, April 11-12, 2016
From the 11th to the 12th of April 2016, the 18th International Conference on Lexicography and Discourse Prosody will be held in Venice, Italy. The purpose of the conference is to give researchers, educators, and practitioners the opportunity to discuss their most recent challenges and solutions, perceived trends and future challenges.
W.F.H. “Bill” Nicolaisen (1927-2016)
source: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/news/7471/
The American Name Society mourns the death of one of its leading lights. W.F.H (Bill) Nicolaisen died on February 15, 2016 in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Bill was born on June 13, 1927 in Halle/Salle, in east-central Germany, near Leipzig. A prolific author in all areas of onomastics, he also published extensively in folklore studies. In fact, in addition to having served as the president of the American Name Society, he is the only folklorist to have been president of both the American Folklore Society and the Folklore Society (Great Britain). The author of over 600 journal articles, perhaps Bill’s most widely-known onomastic works are the 1976 Scottish Place-Names (London: B.T. Batsford), The Names of Towns and Cities in Britain (with M. Gelling and M. Richards) (London: B.T. Batsford), and “Place Names in Bilingual Communities” (Names 23: 167-74).
Bill is survived by his wife, four daughters, many grandchildren and one great-granddaughter. He will be greatly missed.
Erasing Franco’s memory one street at a time
Spain is slowly moving away from the time of Franco. The Madrid City council recently agreed to rename a street of Franco-era association after an anarchist known as the Red Angel, Melchor Rodriguez Garcia. This is one of many such street name changes planned to move Madrid toward pluralism and diversity.
Conference on Language Technologies, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 29 – October 1, 2016
From the 29th of September to the 1st of October 2016, the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia will be holding the 10th annual Conference on Language Technologies. Among the many topics being solicited for abstract proposals are digital linguistics, lexicology, lexicography, and standardization. Abstract submissions are due March 1st, 2016.
Corpus studies at the lexis-grammar interface conference, Lancashire, England, April 2, 2016
On the 2nd of April 2016 at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, England, a conference on corpus studies at the lexis-grammar interface (CLS12) will be held. Interested language researchers with a specialty in lexicography are invited to submit paper abstracts that address grammatical questions using a synchronic or diachronic approach. The deadline for abstracts is the 29th of February 2016.
The Weird Science of Naming New Products
What do the names SoyJoy, Lytro, Kixx, Scribe, Spontania, and Yum! all have in common? They are all the brainchild of naming guru, Anthony Shore.
Read this New York Times Magazine article about the legendary man behind these brand names as well as the other companies that participate in this quirky (and lucrative!!) world of product naming.