About Names: In honor of Mardi Gras, a primer on some more unusual names

Lisa Loring as Wednesday Addams

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his February 13th column, he looks at names associated with Mardi Gras and days of the week.

Tuesday, Feb. 13th, was the last day before Lent on the Christian calendar. Traditionally a day of revelry before Lent’s austerities begin, it has inspired Mardi Gras (French “Fat Tuesday”), the famed New Orleans parties and parades that began Jan. 6 and end Tuesday night. Mardi was regularly if rarely used as a girl’s name between 1936 and 2009. Model Mardee Hoff (1914-2004) started it off. In 1935, she won a contest for “most perfect figure in America.” Artist Norman Rockwell painted her for a 1936 “Saturday Evening Post” cover; she was later featured on the cover of “Life.”

English names for days of the week have also been used as first names or nicknames. Sunday, Monday, Friday and Saturday are English surnames, going back to medieval ancestors. Friday is the most common — men thought unlucky were nicknamed “Friday” no matter what day they were born. All the days of the week turn up as given names in censuses between 1850 and 1940. In the 19th century, most examples were African-American men. West Africa’s Akan culture traditionally named boys after days of the week. That custom occasionally survived among slaves and their descendants.

Want to know more? Read on to find out more about “days of the week” names in history!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Trade Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Trade Names group, run by Mirko Casagranda.

A combination of verbal and visual elements, Trade Names are often a mirror of society in which language and culture intertwine. The aim of the ANS Trade Names group is to share and discuss information and news about trade names, brand names and trademarks. Members are encouraged to participate in the debate on what defines trade names, how they function and how they influence our everyday life.

Dr. Mirko Casagranda is Associate Professor of English at the University of Calabria, Italy. He has been researching onomastics since 2012. Along with trade names, he is interested also in place names in postcolonial contexts. He has published articles in English and Italian about names in Canada and other English-speaking countries. Between 2015 and 2017, he served as a member at large of the ANS Executive Council.

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Book publication: Namen und Geschlechter/Names and Genders

Namen und Geschlechter: Studien zum onymischen Un/doing Gender [Names and Genders: Studies on the Onymic Doing and Undoing of Gender], ed. Damaris Nübling and Stefan Hirschauer, University of Mainz, Germany. This volume will be published by De Gruyter in March 2018.

Personal names are a critical factor in establishing the division into two genders. The essays in this volume examine the gender impact of personal names from linguistic-onomastic, sociological, and historical viewpoints. They investigate, among others, informal names in close relationships, the naming of the unborn, renaming transsexuals, and German, Dutch, and Swedish unisex names.

The language of the volume is German. It will be available in hardback and ebook format.

Britain’s business naming habits

To shed some light on company naming habits, Premier Business Care have conducted research into the thousands of UK businesses registered at Companies House. The results, published in London Loves Business, are intriguing!

The findings show that 62 UK companies cited ‘Brexit’ within their business names during 2017, potentially being forward-thinking for March 2019. Regionally, Scottish are most proud of their heritage, with the term ‘Scotland’ or ‘Scottish’ (9,888) cited within business names 3 times more than ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ (3,129) and being 4 times more popular than ‘England or English’ (2,438).

When looking at Sons Vs Daughters in company names, a staggering 16,859 include the words ‘Son’ or ‘Sons’ In contrast, only 320 names include the word ‘Daughter’.

Want to know more? Click through to read the rest of the story!

David Peacock: Place-Names of Berkshire, Berkshire, UK, May 23 2018

On May 23, 2018, from 2-4 pm, the Berkshire Family Historical Society presents local historian and author, Dr David Peacock, who will talk about the subject of local place names.

Dr. Peacock is a former teacher of politics and history at Padworth College, and also gives evening classes on local history at Newbury College and Reading University. He is Chairman of the Newbury Society. What’s in a name? Rather more than might at first be apparent if you start to look into the meaning of local place names. David will explain the origins of many of Berkshire’s names and explain the ways in which to identify where place names originate from, drawing on examples from across the county.

This is the fourth in a series of five talks this quarter around the theme of the English Civil War, timed to commemorate the 375th anniversary of the Siege of Reading. After the talk, tea and cake will be served. The talk will be given at the Centre for Heritage and Family History in Reading, Berkshire. The cost is £5 (£4 members) and includes tea and cake.

Where do the names of our months come from?

Detail from the Roman-era Sousse Mosaic Calendar, El Jem, Tunisia. Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons

The names of our months are derived from the Roman gods, leaders, festivals, and numbers. If you’ve ever wondered why our 12-month year ends with September, October, November, and December – names which mean the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months – you can blame the Romans.

The Roman year originally had ten months, a calendar which was ascribed to the legendary first king, Romulus. Tradition had it that Romulus named the first month, Martius, after his own father, Mars, the god of war. This month was followed by Aprilis, Maius, and Iunius, names derived from deities or aspects of Roman culture. Thereafter, however, the months were simply called the fifth month (Quintilis), sixth month (Sixtilis) and so on, all the way through to the tenth month, December.

Want to know what happened after that? Click through to this article at The Conversation to find out!

Why are Brisbane streets running north-east named after women?

ABC News: Karina Carvalho

If you’ve lived in Brisbane for a while, you’d have noticed a pattern when it comes to how the Central Business District streets are named. Streets facing north-east have female names, each named after a royal. In the opposite direction, the names are male and also of royal descent. How did this pattern start?

The answer lies back in 1842, a time when Brisbane was still part of New South Wales. Tt was a matter of convenience for the British settlers to name Brisbane’s streets after kings and queens of England. “You don’t know what the native bird names are. You don’t know any Aboriginal names, that’s for certain,” historian Thom Blake said.

Read on to find out more about Brisbane’s street names!

CES 2018 Naming Trends

CES 2018 may be over, but there’s a ton of naming news to report. Over at the Tanj blog, professional namer Scott Milano reports on some of the hundreds of product and company names that he saw at CES. He was “rather underwhelmed by the lack of innovation and imagination with product names from early-show highlights”.

What kind of names showed up? Some were throwbacks to the 2000s, like ForwardX CX-1 for a suitcase, and Vuzix Blade smart glasses. Some are overly familiar, like Gemini and Project Spark for computing. But there were a few fresh new names – click to read the blog and find your favorite!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Place Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Place Names group, run by Evgeny Shokhenmayer.

The purpose of the ANS Place Names group is to share interesting information about various place names. Besides that, our goals are to represent and promote the American Name Society, provide valuable content concerning toponymy of all kinds, grow the community and attract new members, and encourage participation from our members.

Dr. Evgeny Shokhenmayer has been researching onomastics since 2002 (20 articles in French, 15 in English, and 5 in Russian). Since 2012, he has been the blogger behind the website e-Onomastics. In 2017, he was elected as Web Officer at ICOS (International Council of Onomastic Sciences), where he updates the website, coordinates the Facebook page, and manages the Twitter channel.

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Join the new ANS Facebook group – Special Interest in Literary Names

The American Name Society has launched four new Special Interest Groups on Facebook. Today we’re spotlighting the Literary Names group, run by Susan Behrens.

The SIG for Literary Names is a chatting/meeting place for readers who love to notice names of characters in fiction, and who also are fascinated by books in which naming is an integral plot device.

Susan Behrens has published many book reviews for Names (the ANS journal) detailing the theme of names in novels that on the surface are about other things. For the 50th anniversary of the publication of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, she found connections between fiction and real-life names in the Plath world, some of which even led to legal tangles.

Knowing that there are other such like-minded readers out there, we hope that the group can be a collection of all these “noticings.”

Please note that this is a closed group. The moderator will review your request to join, which includes a few simple questions. We look forward to seeing you there!