The decorating magazine House Beautiful is running a naming contest: Readers are encouraged to send in their onomastic nominees for a color featured in the November/December issue of the magazine. The names will be judged on the basis of originality and creativity. The winner will receive a cash prize in addition to the honor of naming the new hue. Submit your name suggestions by the 3rd of January 2016.
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About the Challenge of Naming Products
One of the most daunting tasks of marketing a product is deciding on its name. A product name should both spark interest and inspire trust. Additionally, in today’s globalized market, product names also need cross-cultural appeal. In the attempt to strike this commercial-cultural balance, more than one company has fallen flat.
For example, two product names which might give some North American buyers reason to pause are (1) Pee, the moniker of a cola from Ghana and (2) Barf, a popular detergent from Iran.
While some company executives spend millions each year to avoid such potential onomastic gaffs, others have made humorous naming a part of their marketing mystique. IKEA, for example, has become famous for giving its products quirky, chuckle-inspiring names. In fact, the company has developed a strict internal onomastic system for naming all of its products:
- Fabrics are given female personal names.
- Chairs and desks male personal names.
- Bathroom articles are named after Scandinavian lakes, rivers, and bays (hodonyms).
- Carpets are named after Danish places (toponyms).
According to Business Insider, the name IKEA is an acronym based on the founder’s name (Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd) and the name of a Swedish village outside of his hometown (Agunnaryd).
Where did the word ‘Taser’ come from? A century-old racist science fiction novel
Thanks to its ignominious usage by law enforcement agencies beset with charges of prejudice inspired brutality against the civilian population, tasers have become a stable part of the US American lexicon. The weapon was originally designed to be a comparatively safe yet effective method of controlling suspects. However, the origin of this device’s name is also stepped in racist ideology.
As revealed in a November 2015 issue of the Guardian, Jack Cover, the physicist-inventor of the infamous stun gun, named his martial brain-child after a fictional weapon described in the book, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. Released in 1911, the novel tells the story of White hunter who, armed with an electric rifle, travels to Africa in search of ivory. The name TASER is an acronym composed of the first letters in the phrase: Tom A Swift’s Electric Rifle. As Guardian author J. Lartey muses, it is more than a little unsettling that this popular weapon was “first imagined in a book in which ‘civilized’ whites entered the black wilds for the purpose of plunder, only to cast themselves as the saviors of the natives.”
Study Finds Racial Discrimination by Airbnb Hosts
The short term rental website, Airbnb, requires users to use real names in their profiles. A recent study published in Bloomberg Business found that hosts accept white renters at a higher rate than they accept black renters.
Onomastician Shout-out
Take a look at today’s New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle:
Names Society of Southern Africa International Conference, Bloemfontein, South Africa, September 20-22, 2016
The Names Society of Southern Africa (NSSA) and the Unit for Language Facilitation and Empowerment at the University of the Free State have announced their first call for papers for the 19th NSSA International Conference. Scheduled from the 20th to the 22nd of September 2016 at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the theme of this conference is “Symbolism and Instrumentality in Naming”.
The deadline for abstract submission is the 30 of June 2016. The language of the conference is English.
Teens pick ‘Smombie’ as hippest German word
Each year in Germany, a team of linguists, journalists, celebrities, and teenagers assemble to select the word of the year from a long list of candidates nominated by the general public. After intense deliberation, the expert German Jury finally announced the winner of the 2015 word of the year among German youth “das Jugendwort des Jahres”: Smombie
The word is the special name which German children and teens have given to a person who walks mindlessly through the world while typing on his/her mobile phone. The name “smombie” is a word-blend formed from “zombie” and “smartphone”.
The contest for the coolest, grooviest, hippest, most totally awesome and rad, youth word of year is held each year by the world famous German dictionary maker, Langenscheidt.
Cast your vote for the ANS Name of the Year!
Award for Best Article in Names: A Journal of Onomastics 2015
The 2015 Award Winner is:
Michael Adams, “The Course of a Particular’: Names and Narrative in the Works of Joseph Mitchell” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 63(1): 3-15.
Awardee Biography
Michael Adams is a Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has also served as Editor of American Speech, the publication of the American Dialect Society for ten years. His term ended in November 2015. Most recently, he is co-editor of Studies in the History of the English Language VI: Evidence and Method in Histories of English (De Gruyter Mouton). In addition to being a highly valued, long-time member of the ANS, Professor Adams is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Literary Onomastics, the only scholarly periodical devoted to the study of names in literary texts.
Committee: Michael McGoff, Dr. John Algeo, Kemp Williams.
About Names: Kim once popular for boys and girls
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. This recent column explores Kim.
2016 Emerging Scholar Award Winner
Maryann Parada (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Ethnolinguistic emblems in Latino Chicago: Attitudes of the second generation toward names and naming
The 2015 Emerging Scholar Award Committee is pleased to announce this year’s winner: Maryann Parada from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The title of her submission is “Ethnolinguistic emblems in Latino Chicago: Attitudes of the second generation toward names and naming.”
Abstract:
This study explores the name-language interface in the identity stances and attitudes of Latinos raised in the U.S. It follows Thompson’s (2006) approach in considering the name-identity-language connections for bilinguals, and also responds to Joseph’s (2004) call for work on how individuals perceive and negotiate ethnolinguistic identity through their names. Complementing previous research into the naming decisions of Hispanic immigrant parents, I examine the name-based perspectives of the named themselves. Survey data provided by 54 Latino young adults from the Chicago area are analyzed to investigate the relationship between the ethnic character of the participants’ personal names and their responses on topics such as name suitability and satisfaction, name pronunciation preferences, name changes, and the importance of names as ethnolinguistic identity markers. While clear patterns emerged, the data also highlight the complex, and often contradictive, relationships between self, language, and name.
Biography:
Maryann Parada is a doctoral candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her interests lie in the sociolinguistics of minority Spanish, including issues in the areas of names and identity, language attitudes, family language policy, and heritage language pedagogy. Her recent publication in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education examines the role of birth order in the names of second generation Latinos in Chicago.
Attendees of the upcoming ANS annual conference in January will have a chance to hear her present her research in person.
As the ESA award-winner, Maryann will receive a cash award as well as a mentor who will assist her in preparing her research manuscript for possible publication in a future issue of NAMES. Click here for more information about the award.
This year’s ESA Committee was made up of Dr. Mirko Casagranda, Dr. Jan Tent, and Ms. Lisa Radding.