It is the time to remove the clouds from
the sky of the hope!
Yes, it is the happy New Year,
It’s the time to celebrate.
Happy new year to our dear friends and
colleagues!
Month: December 2020
2nd Session of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
Place and date: New York, 3–7 May 2021
The theme for the second session is Geographical Names Supporting Sustainable Development and Management of the Pandemic. It is aligned to the General Assembly defined theme of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development for 2021, “Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”.
Governments are requested to email the Secretariat not later than 15 March 2021 the full-length documents (national reports, divisional reports, working group reports and technical papers). The summaries should be submitted before 22 January 2021 in order for them to be translated and issued in the six official languages.
The city of Naples will name the stadium to Diego Maradona
The city of Naples will name the municipal stadium to Diego Armando Maradona. Laura Bismunto, the president of the Toponymy Commission of the City Council of Naples, announced the change of title of the San Paolo Stadium in Naples.
The Neapolitan stadium, initially called Stadio del Sole and renamed with today’s title in 1963, will be the second stadium in the world to bear the name of Maradona. The other is the Diego Armando Maradona in Buenos Aires, where Argentinos Junior plays. Maradona’s death is a mourning that will leave its mark in the Neapolitan community and dedicating the Stadium of Naples to what many have called the greatest footballer of all time is an essential gesture.
Call for papers: Meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Names 2021
We invite you most warmly to join the Canadian Society for the Study of Names, also known as la Société canadienne d’onomastuqie, in their conference meeting on Saturday, May 29, 2021 and Sunday, May 30, 2021. Please note that as the 2020 annual conference was cancelled due to COVID-19, all papers accepted last year will automatically be accepted for our 2021 conference.
At the meeting, members may present papers in formal theme sessions, participate in a toponymic fieldtrip and attend the annual general meeting of the Society. In 2021, the CSSN will meet as part of the Congress of the Humanites and Social Sciences “Northern Relations” to be held at University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada from May 27th to June 4th, 2021.
Please send your paper proposal abstract to arrive by February 1st, 2021 using the following address: jonathan.lofft@mail.utoronto.ca
Call for papers: 30th International Cartographic Conference, Florence, Italy, in December 2021
The conference topics will be covered Toponymy in Cartography, Art in Cartography, Atlases, Cartographic Heritage into the Digital Domain, Cartography and Children, Cartography for Early Warning and Crisis Management, Cognition in Geovisualization, Education and Continuous Learning in Cartography, Generalization and Multiple Representation, Artificial Intelligence in Mapping, Social Sensing and Visual Analytics, History of Cartography etc.
The 30th International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2021) brings together cartographers and GI Science specialists from around the world. The 30th International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2021) will be held in Florence, Italy on 14-18 December 2021.
Full Papers Submission Closing: January 15, 2021
Abstracts Submission Closing: March 26, 2021
Nomina Africana: Journal of African Onomastics / Vol. 34 (1)
The current issue of the Journal of African Onomastics Nomina Africana Nr. 34 (1) has just been published. You may enjoy the below-mentioned articles therein:
Juxtaposition of speech acts and Basotho names in Lesotho by Beatrice Ekanjume-Ilongo, Taofik Adesanmi and ’Maboleba Kolobe
The significance of selected characters’ personal and family names in the Shona novels, Pfumo Reropa and Mubairo by Godwin Makaudze
Scale, street renaming and the continued visibility of colonial street names in Harare by Zvinashe Mamvura, Charles Pfukwa and Davie E. Mutasa
Anthroponomastics of concubinage in traditional Ngwa Igbo society in Nigeria by Chimaobi Onwukwe
The choice of craft beer names in present-day South Africa : an analysis by Bertie Neethling
Corrigendum
About Names: Marvel’s Black Widow helped Scarlett reach its greatest popularity yet
Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his November 22nd column, he looks at the history of the name Scarlett.
Scarlett is an English surname derived from the Old French “escarlate,” “scarlet-colored cloth,” designating one who sold expensive fabrics. Will Scarlet has been one of Robin Hood’s Merry Men since the ballad “A Gest of Robin Hood” was written around 1450. In modern times, he’s usually portrayed as Robin’s youngest outlaw.
In the 1850 United States census, there were 252 people with the last name Scarlett. In the 19th century, a few boys received Scarlett as a first name. The first famous female Scarlett is Scarlett O’Hara, heroine of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, “Gone With the Wind,” and the 1939 film based on it. In the novel, her full name is Katie Scarlett O’Hara, after her paternal grandmother, but everyone except her father calls her “Scarlett.”
Scarlett’s real boom began along with Scarlett Johansson’s career around 2002. The 8,343 born in 2019 ranked it 24th, its highest ever.
Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Scarletts in history!
Call for Nominations for the 2020 Names of the Year
The American Name Society requests nominations for the “Names of the Year for 2020”. The names selected will be ones that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States and Canada.
Nominations are called for in the five following categories:
- Personal Names: Names or nicknames of individual real people, animals, or hurricanes.
- Place Names: Names or nicknames of any real geographical location, including all natural features, political subdivisions, streets, and buildings. Names of national or ethnic groups would be included here.
- Trade Names: Names of real commercial products, as well as names of both for-profit and non-profit incorporated companies and organizations, including businesses and universities.
- Artistic & Literary Names: Names of fictional persons, places, or institutions, in any written, oral, or visual medium, as well as titles of art works, books, plays, television programs, or movies. Such names are deliberately given by the creator of the work.
- Miscellaneous Names: Any name which does fit in the above four categories, such as names created by linguistic errors, names of particular inanimate objects other than hurricanes, names of unorganized political movements, names of languages, etc. In general, to be considered a name such items would be capitalized in everyday English orthography.
Winners will be chosen in each category, and then a final vote will determine the overall Name of the Year for 2020. Anyone may nominate a name. All members of the American Name Society attending the annual meeting will select the winner from among the nominees at the annual ANS meeting on January 24, 2021
Advance nominations must be received before January 21, 2021.
You can submit your nominations via this form: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LVGCQRZ
Alternately, you can download the form and email it to Deborah Walker: debwalk@gmail.com
Nominations will also be taken from the floor at the Annual Meeting.
Thank you for your nominations!
Antarctic place names recognise ‘modern explorers’
Antarctica is getting 28 new place names to recognise British individuals who’ve made a major contribution to advancing science in the polar regions. The list includes Jonathan Shanklin, co-discoverer of the ozone hole, and Alastair Fothergill, whose BBC films such as Frozen Planet have widened understanding of the White Continent.
The honourees will be associated with various mountains, glaciers and bays. These are features known previously only by their anonymous coordinates. It’s highly unusual for so large a group of people to be recognised in this way all at once. But the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee felt something special was required to mark the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the continent.
American History reflected in proper names bestowed on many birds
Read the Ruth Bass’ article here.
Lewis’s Woodpecker, Deschutes National Forest, Near Fort Rock, Oregon
Dozens of birds bear the names of those credited with identifying them, like the Bonaparte’s gull honoring Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s nephew; the Cooper’s hawk, familiar to New Englanders, named for William Cooper, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History; the Blackburnian warbler for pre-Revolution naturalist Anna Blackburn.
But, what’s ruffling feathers in the American Ornithological Society today is a growing number of their scientists protesting the old practice of giving people names to birds. They are focusing on some of the so honored who reflect colonialism and on the fact that Indigenous peoples had met birds named for Audubon and Wilson and Cooper before those men were born.