Register for the ANS Annual Meeting 2025 (via Zoom, February 22, 2025)

Registration is open for ANS 2025, which will be held on February 22, 2025. You can register online via Eventbrite by clicking here or the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/american-name-society-annual-meeting-2025-tickets-1071828831889

You can also download this form and mail in a check.

The American Name Society Annual Meeting for 2025 will be held online using the Zoom platform. It is accessible via Mac or PC. The meeting will require a passcode, which will be sent via email to all registrants and presenters by February 21st.

We are working hard to set up a schedule that will work globally, and this means that some presenters will be scheduled at times outside of normal working hours.

The Book of Abstracts will be available before the conference.

Keep apprised of any changes to the annual meeting schedule here.

Conference Panel: “Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes” at LSA 2025, Philadelphia, PA (10 January 2025)

The ANS will host a panel at the LSA 2025 conference, which will be held 9 to 12 January 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes

an organized session at the 2025 annual meeting of the

Linguistic Society of America

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

9-12 January 2025

The American Name Society (ANS) is pleased to announce a panel that will be convened at the 2025 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), which will take place on 9-12 January 2025 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a long-time sister society of the LSA, the ANS frequently held its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the LSA. This panel will celebrate the relationship between the two organizations with three papers on the theme of names and world-building.

The panel is titled “Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes,” and it features three papers on names and the fantasy genre of literature and Role Playing Games. The panel will be held on 10 January 2025 from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm in Franklin Hall 1 of the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. The papers in this session are:

Richard Janda (IU – Bloomington), “Tolkien’s vs. Rowling’s Names: Historical vs. Modern Reality; Elvish vs. Humorous Inventions”

Brandon Simonson (Boston University), “The Linguistic Function of Religious Names in the Creative World of Dungeons & Dragons”

Jean-Louis Vaxelaire (Université de Namur) and Marine Verriest (Université de Namur), “Theirastra and Gérard: Onomastic differences between two tabletop role-playing games (RPG)”

Registration for the 2025 LSA annual meeting is now open:

https://web.cvent.com/event/40d9411e-b965-4659-b9c3-63046eeed3d4/

For more information about the Linguistic Society of America, click here:

https://www.lsadc.org/

The Call for Papers described the session as such:

This session explores names and naming conventions in popular culture, especially personal names and place names that appear in works of literature, music, film, and games. Names convey meaning, but they also serve greater purposes of world-building in popular culture and its reception. Whether the names are of competing houses in A Game of Thrones, the lawless outer rim worlds in the Star Wars universe, or the vault-dwelling protagonists in the Fallout series, each name adds substance and meaning to the world for which it was created. Papers in this session organized by the American Name Society (a long-time sister society of the LSA) address the complex intersection between names and the worlds that they inhabit.

Download a PDF copy of the Call for Papers by clicking here.

For more information about the LSA 2025 conference, visit the LSA conference page here.

Registration Opens: ANS Name of the Year Discussion and Vote (Virtual, 9 January 2025)

ANS Name of the Year Discussion and Vote

Thursday, January 9, 2025 on Zoom, 12 – 2pm PST

REGISTRATION is now open! Click here to register for the discussion and vote.

Join us for our annual Name of the Year discussion! We will be nominating, discussing, and voting on eligible names in the following categories:

Personal Names: Names of groups or individuals, including nicknames, given names, surnames, or a combination of these.
Place Names: Names or nicknames of any real geographical locations (e.g., rivers, lakes, mountains, streets, buildings, regions, countries, etc.).
Brand Names: Names of commercial products, companies, organizations, and businesses (both for-profit and non-profit). This category includes personal names used as brands for commerce.
Artistic/Literary Names: Names of fictional persons, places, or institutions, in any written, oral, or visual medium (e.g., titles of art or musical works, books, plays, tv programs, movies, games, etc.).
E-Names: Names of online platforms, websites, and movements, as well as hashtags, usernames, etc.
Miscellaneous Names: Names that do not fit in any of the above five categories.

The discussion will be conducted by Laurel Sutton, ANS President and Name of the Year Coordinator.

If you have not done so already, you can nominate names via this form

Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2024, at midnight Pacific.

Tickets to this event are free!

The URL to our Zoom room will be sent to everyone who registers for this event.

Please review previous Name of the Year reports, to better understand the type of names that will be accepted:

Name of the Year Report 2023 (PDF)

Name of the Year Report 2022 (PDF)

Name of the Year Report 2021 (PDF)