Month: November 2019

Renaming climate change: can a new name make us take action?

 

As a professional namer, Aaron Hall found himself thinking about the terms “climate change” and “global warming.” Are these scientific terms too neutral? Could the tools of branding and brand naming create a more resonant, powerful name to grab attention and inspire people to take action?

With all of this in mind, his team of wordsmiths developed the following new names for climate change: Global Meltdown, Global Melting, Climate Collapse, Climate Chaos, Boiling Point, Melting Point or Scorched Earth.

These options are subtle brand shifts from “global warming,” yet they deliver a more negative image. A meltdown is a disastrous event that draws from the ultimate terror of a nuclear meltdown, an apt metaphor for global destruction. In naming, we call metaphorical names “suggestive names,” and they are one of the most popular types of names.

Which do you like most?

Call for papers “Mapping Space Mapping Time Mapping Texts”, July 16-17 2020, London, UK

This two-day interdisciplinary conference is hosted by the AHRC Funded Chronotopic Cartographies project in partnership with The British Library. It comes out of primary research into the digital visualisation of space and time for fictional works that have no real-world correspondence. Chronotopic Cartographies develops digital methods and tools that enable the mapping of literary works by generating graphs as “maps” directly out of the coded text.

We invite submissions in the form of either 20-minute papers or 5-minute poster sessions. Individuals giving a paper or poster may also wish to run informal workshops for shared knowledge exchange.

Abstract Deadline: 31st January 2020.
E-mail abstracts to Dawn Stobbart: d.stobbart1@lancaster.ac.uk

About Names: Though of German origins, the name Irma really took off in France

Marion Rombauer Becker looks over “Joy of Cooking” with her mother, Irma Rombauer, in 1951. Irma Rombauer first published the cookbook in 1931.

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his November 8th column, he looks at the history of the name Irma.

The ninth edition of “Joy of Cooking” came out. Its first edition was privately published by author Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962) in 1931.

Irma is a short form of Germanic names starting with “ermen,” meaning “whole” or “all.” Emma was originally a Norman French form of the same name. Several medieval saints in England and Germany had “ermen” names. Sixth-century forest hermit St. Ermelinde (“whole-soft”) is venerated in Belgium. St. Irmgard (“whole-enclosure”) of Chiemsee (830-866) was a great-granddaughter of Charlemagne who became an abbess. St. Ermenburga (“whole-fortress”) was a Queen of Mercia in England who founded a nunnery.

Unlike Emma, Irma wasn’t used as a name in its own right until around 1700. Though this began in Germany, Irma’s first big success came in France.

Homemaker humorist Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) is probably the most famous person with the “E” spelling, though gospel singer Erma Franklin (1938-2002), older sister of Aretha, is also well-known.

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

Voprosy Onomastiki (Problems of Onomastics) publishes Vol. 16 (2019), Issue 3

The editorial board of the journal Voprosy Onomastiki (Problems of Onomastics) is pleased to inform you of the publication of Vol. 16 (2019), Issue 3. The issue is available on the journal’s website.

 

Articles

Litvina, A., Uspenskij, F. Veneration of Baptismal Saints in Russia in the 16th–17th Centuries

Borovik, Iu. V. Personal Names of Newborns in the Old Believer Communities of Ekaterinburg in the Early 20th Century

Plotnikova, A. A. Notes on the Regional Features of Personal Naming among the Old Believers of Latgale

Mullonen, I. I. Motivation vs Remotivation as a Source of Ethnocultural Information (Based on Place Names of Karelia)

Voronina, L. V., Melnikova, Ju. N., Skokova, T. N. Word-Formation Patterns in German Toponymy: A Dynamic Perspective

Podberezkina, L. Z. The Onomasticon of “Stolbists”

Garanin, A. A., Garanina, R. M. The Use of Eponyms in Modern Medical Terminology

Podyukov, I. A. Onomastic Representation of the Otherworld in Russian Popular Language and Culture

Madieva, G., Suprun, V., Boribaeva, G. The Scientific, Folk, and Armchair Etymology of City Names (Based on the Names of the Cities in the Republic of Kazakhstan)

Golomidova, M. V. Use of Product-Naming Techniques for Creating Official City Toponyms: Analysis of Perspectives

Kachalkova, Yu., Ruth, M. “Ideological” Urban Place Names and the Renaming of City Streets

Sudakov, G. V. Settlement Names: Problems of Conventional Usage (with Reference to Oikonyms of the Vologda Region)

Notes

Breeze, A. Doubts on Irish Iubhar ‘Yew Tree’ and Eburacum or York

Sousa, X. Geonomastics on the Web: Visualizing Surname Distributions in a Regional Space

In memoriam

Dmitrieva, T. N. Gábor J. Székely and his Contribution to the Study of Language and Toponymy of the Mansi and Other North-Ural Peoples

A Bibliography of Works by Gábor B. Székely

Academic curriculum

Bekasova, E. N., Yakimov, P. A. 4th All-Russian Conference in Memory of Boris Moiseev

Voters will decide in a referendum on whether the island should compete as “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei”

A group of pro-independence advocates have claimed that Taiwan’s athletes would not be barred from international competition if a proposed name change for the island’s sporting teams went ahead, challenging a warning from the International Olympic Committee on the issue.

Voters will decide in a referendum this weekend on whether the island should compete as “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei” in all international sporting events, including the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

 

 

Taiwan has competed as Chinese Taipei since 1981, when Beijing – which sees the self-ruled island as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland – succeeded in making the IOC alter the island’s official “Republic of China” team name.

Since May 4, the IOC has warned the island three times that it risked losing its IOC membership and its athletes would not be allowed to attend international games if it pushed for the name change.

NASA Names Most Distant Object Ever Explored ‘Arrokoth,’ the Powhatan Word for Sky

Last January, NASA’s New Horizons probe flew past an icy space rock designated nearly four billion miles beyond Pluto. The rock, dubbed 2014 MU69, is the most distant cosmic body ever surveyed by a human spacecraft. At the time, the team nicknamed the object Ultima Thule after a mythical northern land beyond the borders of the known world. But the name didn’t stick due to its usage in Nazi ideology.

This week, NASA announced that the official name for 2014 MU69 will be Arrokoth, which is the word for “sky” in the Powhatan and Algonquian languages. The name was bestowed with the consent of tribal elders and representatives. “The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own,” planetary scientist Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, says in a statement.

Navigating New York with the “City of Women” Map

Enjoy a chat with map co-creator Joshua Jelly-Schapiro about the process of creating “City of Women” and how maps help us see places in new ways.

The “City of Women” map, co-created by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly Schapiro, is based off of the iconic Vignelli subway map and names each station for a woman who left a mark in the “City that never sleeps.” Rebecca Solnit is the author of many books including Savage Dreams, Storming the Gates of Paradise, and the best-selling atlases Infinite City and Unfathomable City. Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose work often focuses on place, race, and how human difference is thought about and acted on in the world. He is the author of Island People: The Caribbean and the World (Knopf, 2016) and the co-editor, also with Rebecca Solnit, of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (California, 2016) which the City of Women map is a part of.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names is online

The Dictionary has been realized by John Everett-Heath and comprises over 11,000 entries.

This dictionary explores the history, meanings, and origin of place names around the world. It covers continents, countries, regions, islands, bays, capes, cities, towns, deserts, lakes, mountains, and rivers, giving the name in the local language as well as key historical facts associated with many place names.

The fifth edition includes two recent county name changes: that of Swaziland to Eswatini and the final resolution of the long-running dispute about the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, which has become Northern Macedonia.

In addition to the entries themselves, the dictionary includes a glossary of foreign word elements which appear in place-names and their meaning, as well as a list of personalities and leaders who have influenced the naming of places around the world.

What is this “Name Day” Tradition in Spain?

Have you ever had a Spaniard inform you that today is special because “es el día de mi santo” (which literally means “it’s my saint’s day”)? While this is a foreign concept to most of us who grew up in the US, Spain and many other European countries have a long tradition of observing the Christian calendar of saints.

In Spain, families tend to choose names for their children that come from the Bible or are otherwise connected with history. Thus, they have a special day dedicated to each of these names and this day is almost like a secondary birthday for everyone with this name. Historically, many Spaniards would name their child after the saint whose day the child was born on but today that tradition is not so popular and it more common to have a saint’s day that does not fall on your birthday.

Read more here