Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. This week’s column explores Adam.… Read More
About Names
How to pronounce EURO players’ names correctly
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has been continually beleaguered by reports of embezzlement, bribery, and general skullduggery. In an effort to shine the spotlight in a completely different direction, the UEFA has started a new campaign to show the ways the multi-billion dollar conglomerate helps to bring people together.
Visitors to the UEFA website can now find a helpful guide to correctly pronouncing the names of the top European team players. For example, to help fans (in particular English-speaking fans) pronounce France’s team players, the following advice is given: “Basic school French should help. Dimitri Payet’s surname sounds like ‘pie-ette’— equivalent to the sound of Liam Gallagher from Oasis saying ‘I ate.’” Although well-meaning, advice like this seems to have caused more jeers than cheers among Europe’s football fans.
About Names: Roots of ‘Summer’ stretch back to antiquity
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. This recent column explores seasonal names.… Read More
The world’s endonyms on a map
“An endonym is the name for a place, site or location in the language of the people who live there.” This world map depicts is labeled in endonyms. Take a look!… Read More
The Most Popular Surnames in Each State of the USA
Ancestry.com recently published a map of the most popular surnames in the United States, based on their data. Despite the diversity of culture in the US, a few names dominate, for example, Johnson and Smith.
Why do we forget names?
Why do we forget names? Forgetting names is one of our memory’s most common failures – but there are ways to make them stick. Our brains don’t have a simple filing system, with separate folders for each kind of information and a folder labelled “Names”. Rather, our minds are associative. They are built out of patterns of interconnected information. When you meet someone for the first time, you learn their name. For your memory, however, it is probably an arbitrary piece of information unconnected to anything else you know and unconnected to all the other things you later learn about them.
How Transgender People Choose Their New Names
In January 2016, the scholars of the American Name Society selected “Caitlyn Jenner” as the official Name of the Year for 2015. One of the main reasons for this decision was the socio-historical significance that this name had in highlighting the importance of transgenderism across the United States and the around the world. The process of selecting a new name to mark one’s declaration of self is a common and often highly emotional experience for people within the transgender community. In her TIME article, Katy Steinmetz discusses how some prominent transgender people went about this process.
Tackling Naming Questions in Gay or Lesbian Families
One of the interesting questions that new same-sex parents often face is what names their children should use to distinguish between them. In a family with two differently gendered parents, this issue is often fairly straight-forward (e.g. Mom and Dad; Ma and Pa). But in families with two moms or two dads, creativity is often called for. In a great video by Brandy and Susan of The Next Family, the two moms discuss how they dealt with finding names within their own family.
About Names: Hagiotoponyms
Ever heard of a hagiotoponym? It comes from the Greek hagios (holy), topos (place), and onoma (name). Learn more with the Database of Scottish Hagiotoponyms, a paper on Italian hagiotoponyms, or a paper on Catalonian hagiotoponyms.… Read More
The vaudeville, impact and substance of political name-calling
Learn more about the theater of political name calling, particularly in Australia. This phenomenon isn’t only happening in the United States.… Read More