Call for Papers: Special Issue of NAMES on “Name Bias and Prejudice”

Call for Papers: Special Issue of NAMES

2024-05-12

The American Name Society (ANS) is now issuing its first call for abstracts for an upcoming Special issue of the Society’s journal, NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics. The theme for the 2024 Special Issue is “Name Bias and Prejudice”. From anthroponyms to commercial names, toponyms to zoonyms, proposals focusing on any name type, in any language or culture, from any time period, and utilizing any analytical method are welcome. Proposals examining name bias and prejudice in the arts (e.g., literature, music, film, etc.) are also strongly encouraged. However, all proposals must include a clearly articulated theoretical framework, research question(s), and a preliminary reference list. All submissions will be subjected to blind review. The following criteria will be used in the review process: innovation; writing style and organization; argumentation; potential to make a substantive contribution to onomastic research; and adherence to the NAMES Style Sheet. Detailed instructions for the submission process are provided below.

Proposal Submission Process

Abstract proposals (max. 800 words, not including references) should be sent as an email attachment (PDF format) to Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com);
Proposals must include a preliminary reference list that follows the formatting regulations of the NAMES Style Sheet;
Proposals must include “Bias” in the subject line of the email;
All proposals must include an abstract, a tentative title, the full name(s) of the author(s), the author(s) affiliation(s), and email address(s) in the accompanying email and NOT within the body of the abstract;
DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 15 July 2024. Authors will be notified about the results of the blind review on or by 15 August 2024.

For further information about this call, please feel free to contact Professor I. M. Nick (nameseditor@gmail.com).

We look forward to receiving your submission.

Call for Papers: High Desert Linguistics Society 16th Biennial Meeting (1-3 November 2024)

From the High Desert Linguistics Society:

The 16th biennial High Desert Linguistics Society will take place from Friday, November 1st, through Sunday, November 3rd, 2024 at the University of New Mexico. The theme of the conference will be “Harmony in Diversity: Innovative Approaches to Language Variation and Change”. We welcome submissions for in-person or virtual presentations, posters, and panels directly related to this topic, as well as work related to cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, typology, sociolinguistics, sign language linguistics, discourse analysis, and related fields such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and education.

Link to abstract submission: https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/HDLS16

Download the PDF of the Call for Papers here

Call for Papers: “Literary Name Games: Onomastic Indices, Icons, and/or Symbols” ANS @ MLA 2025

Literary Name Games: Onomastic Indices, Icons, and/or Symbols

Writers the world over play with names of characters, places, and more to create mood, further plot, and expand meaning. In this panel, we will consider the ways in which names of characters (charactonyms), places (toponyms), and other components function as affective identifiers, as visual or aural icons, and/or as figurative symbols in literature from any era, from any narrative genre, in any media, and for readers of any age. Useful resources might include, the archives of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics (https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/issue/archive), the ANS list of terminology (https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/keywords), Dorothy Dodge Robbins’ edited collection Literary Onomastics (2023), and the Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming (2018).

Proposal Submission Process:

Email Dr. Anne W. Anderson (awanderson.editing@gmail.com). Please place “MLA 2025 proposal” in the subject line. In the email body, include the title and first line of the abstract, the full name(s) of the author(s), their affiliation(s), and their email address(es). Attach a PDF file that includes the proposal title, abstract of up to 350 words, and a brief list of works cited. Do NOT include author identification.
DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 11:59 pm EST on Friday 15 March 2024. Authors will be notified about the results of the blind review on or by 25 March 2024.
Contributors selected for the thematic panel must be members of both MLA and ANS in order to present their papers; MLA membership must be obtained by 7 April 2024;
Questions? Please contact Dr. Anne W. Anderson (awanderson.editing@gmail.com)

Call for Nominations: 2023 Names of the Year

Call for Nominations:

2023 Names of the Year

The American Name Society requests nominations for the 2023 “Names of the Year” (NoY) vote. Nominations should demonstrate significant linguistic features through their formation, productivity, and/or application, irrespective of associations with the name-bearer. It’s not just your favorite name! Nominations should also reflect important trends in US society during the past year. It is not necessary for a nominated name to have originated in the US.

Nominations are called for 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 same name can be nominated for more than one category. Each nomination must be supported with an explanation. The NoY Committee reserves the right to reclassify nominations and to reject nominations that do not meet the requirements. Nominations will be evaluated on their linguistic innovation, potential to influence US language use, and ability to capture national attention. The popularity or notoriety of the name-bearer is not prioritized in the evaluation process.

During the NoY special session, the NoY Coordinator will present all of the accepted nominations by category. Attending members discuss the nominations and the NoY may accept additional nominations from the floor. Once the nominations for a category are finalized, the attending members vote to determine a winner for each category. The category winners will automatically be put up for a vote for overall Name of the Year. In addition, the NoY Coordinator may accept nominations from the floor.

Although anyone may nominate a name in advance. However, only ANS members who attend the NoY discussion may vote during the special session. This year’s NoY session will take place at 12:00 pm [Noon] Pacific on January 4^th 2024, held via Zoom. To make your nominations, complete the online form found here:

https://nick662.typeform.com/to/qiS2bXas

Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2023, at midnight Pacific.

Call for Papers, Special Issue: “Towards a neurodiverse sociocultural linguistics”

Call for Papers, Special Issue: “Towards a neurodiverse sociocultural linguistics”

Editors Ayden Parish and Kira Hall

Neurodiversity, understood as the range of human cognitive and neurological variance, has been classically marginalized as only of interest through a medicalized, pathologizing lens. The neurodiversity movement, however, advocates that these differences should not be seen as biomedical entities to be first and foremost cured, but as variation to be accommodated and as lived experiences whose perspectives should be recognized and valued. Across the social sciences, neurodiversity-affirming approaches have come to demonstrate that a sociocultural angle is necessary, both in order to improve theorization of neurodiverse conditions and also to bring a new critical eye to current theories that only account for normative relationships with language and sociality. Crucially, these critiques make important steps in asserting the agency of neurodivergent individuals. We hope to further enrich these discussions with specific attention to sociocultural linguistics as a site for neurodiverse intervention.

We invite papers for a special topics issue on neurodiversity to be submitted to Language in Society. Our aim is to demonstrate the necessity of incorporating neurodiversity into the study of language in social life and to showcase the productive new directions engendered by such approaches. We welcome a broad vision of neurodiversity that includes not only neurodevelopmental disabilities such as autism, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome, but also other neurological conditions like dementia and aphasia, as well as mental illnesses, including but not limited to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and OCD.

We are interested in papers from a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, including linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, socially-oriented discourse analysis, crip linguistics and related perspectives, among others. Possible topics include:

Analyses of interactions amongst neurodiverse speakers
Ethnographic approaches to language and embodiment in neurodiverse communities
Discourse analytical approaches to the construction of neurodiversity and neurotypicality
Critical reframings of traditionally pathologized linguistic behaviors such as echolalia or “disorganized” speech
Other creative, socially-oriented approaches to the intersection of neurodiversity and linguistics

We are especially interested in hearing from early career scholars and those examining neurodiversity’s intersections with race, gender, sexuality, and other disabilities.

If you are interested in submitting a paper to the special issue, please email an abstract of up to 500 words by January 8th to the editors. Full drafts of selected papers will be due in May of 2024. Please feel free to write the editors with any inquiries: Ayden Parish (ayden.parish@colorado.edu) and Kira Hall (kira.hall@colorado.edu).

Call for Papers: 2023 ANS Emerging Scholar Award

In 2007, the American Name Society established the ANS Emerging Scholar Award (ANSESA) to recognize the outstanding scholarship of an early career onomastics researcher. This special distinction is given to a new scholar whose work is judged by a panel of onomastic researchers to be of superior academic quality. This year’s selection committee is made up of Dr. Jan Tent, the 2023 ANSESA Committee Chair; Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins; and Dr. Andreas Gavrielatos.

Recipients of this prestigious award receive the following:

a cash prize of $250 US dollars
one year of membership in the ANS
public announcements on the NAMES and ANS websites
a profile in the ANS newsletter, to be written by the Chair of the ANSESA Committee

Award recipients are encouraged to submit their manuscripts for publication in NAMES. The Selection Committee reserves the right to refrain from giving this award in those years in which no submission is deemed to have met the above-mentioned requirements.

Application Guidelines

To be considered for this award, applicants must submit the full text of their paper by midnight (E.S.T.), the 15th of December 2023, to this year’s ANSESA Chair, Dr. Jan Tent (<jan.tent@mq.edu.au>). Submissions must be sent as an email attachment in either a .doc or .docx format. For ease of processing, please be sure to include the keyword “ESA2023” in the subject line of your email.

Submission Requirements

All submissions must be prepared according to the guidelines provided at <https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/guidelines>. Authors must use the formatting rules listed in the official Style Sheet of Names, the journal of the American Name Society. The Style Sheet is available at the journal website: <https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/StyleSheet>. Submissions will not only be judged upon the quality of the writing and the scientific merit of the submission presented, but also on their adherence to these formatting regulations. NOTE: The main text should be no more than 5,000 words, excluding the endnotes, bibliography, graphics, and any supplementary material.

Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for the ANSESA, applicants must be an entry-level professional, an untenured academic, or a student. Applicants must have had their single-authored abstract accepted for presentation at the ANS annual conference and be a member of the ANS. Previously published papers are not eligible for consideration. However, papers based on unpublished theses or dissertations are eligible. The ANSESA Selection Committee will judge all submissions for their methodological soundness, innovation, and potential contribution to the field of onomastics. Although past recipients of the ANSESA are eligible to re-apply for an entirely new piece of scholarship, preference may be given to first-time applicants. Please direct questions to this year’s ANSESA Committee Chair, ANS Vice President, Dr. Jan Tent (<jan.tent@mq.edu.au>).

A PDF download of this call can be found here.

Upcoming Symposium: International Symposium on Place Names 2025 (September 2025)

From Chrismi Loth:

International Symposium on Place Names 2025
Short Title: ISPN 2025

Date: 01-Sep-2025 – 30-Sep-2025
Location: Clarens, South Africa
Contact: Chrismi Loth
Contact Email: kongresETFB@ufs.ac.za

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics

Theme: Harmonising toponymic heritage: balancing standardisation and local diversity
Dates: To be confirmed

About the ISPN (from the ISPN 2023 home page):

“The vision of the International Symposium on Place Names series is to advance research on place names and to provide a platform for international collaboration in this regard. As such, in addition to the symposium, a related workshop usually directly precedes the symposium.”

Call for Papers: 3rd International Scientific Conference “ONOMASTIC INVESTIGATIONS” (University of Latvia, 9-10 May 2024)

CALL FOR PAPERS

3rd International Scientific Conference “ONOMASTIC INVESTIGATIONS”.

Latvian Language Institute (University of Latvia) invites to participate in the 3rd International Scientific Conference “Onomasticinvestigations”. Conference will be held at the University of Latvia on May 9–10, 2024. The conference is dedicated to our colleague Ojārs Bušs (1944–2017) who would have celebrated his 80th anniversary on April 28, 2024. The theme of the conference is “Variability of proper names.” We invite you to submit paper topics that address an area of research relevant the variability of place and personal names, as well as other proper names. We invite to look at their changes and changing processes, both in time and in perception, and under theinfluence of linguistic and extralinguistic factors.

Working languages: Latvian, English, German.

Duration of presentation: 20 minutes.

Please submit the application form and the abstract of your presentation (2500-3000 characters with spaces) by 15 January 2024 online: https://lavi.lu.lv/onomastikas-petijumu-anketa/

Abstracts, regardless of the language of the presentation, must be submitted in English.

The notification of acceptance/rejection will be sent by 1 March 2024.

After positive peer-review, articles based on the presentations will be published in the journal of the conference “Onomastic InvestigationsIII”.

Participation fee:

EUR 80 (paid by 20 March 2024) or EUR 90 (after 20 March 2024) for presenter;

EUR 60 (paid by 20 March 2024) or EUR 65 (after 20 March 2024) for each co-author participating in the conference.

Participation fee includes:

for presenters and co-authors participating in the conference – a certificate of participation, participant’s materials, technical support at theconference and for the journal of the conference, rights to submit an article, coffee breaks, copy of the author of the journal of theconference.

Scientific Commitee
Dr. philol. Laimute Balode
Mg. hum. Anna Elizabete Griķe
Dr. habil. philol. Irēna Ilga Jansone
Dr. philol. Sanda Rapa
Dr. philol. Renāte Siliņa-Piņķe
Dr. philol. Anta Trumpa

Organizing Commitee
Mg. paed. Gunita Arnava
Mg. hum. Ieva Auziņa
Mg. hum. Anna Elizabete Griķe
Bc. hum. Laura Paula Jansone
Mg. hum. Agita Kazakeviča
Mg. hum. Sintija Ķauķīte
Elīna Ķēniņa
Mg. hum. Anete Ozola
Bc. hum. Odrija Ratfeldere
Mg. hum. Marita Silkāne
Mg. hum. Ilze Štrausa

For more information about the conference, including bank transfer details for the fee, visit: https://lavi.lu.lv/en/conferences-2024/

E-mail: onomastikaspetijumi@gmail.com

Call for Papers: The 28th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (DUE 31 October 2023)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 28th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences

Paper proposals for the 28th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences are now invited. The deadline for proposal submissions is 31 October 2023.

Congress theme

The theme of the congress is Sustainability of names, naming and onomastics (see full description here). We organizers encourage scholars to link their papers to the congress theme. Examples of possible approaches are (but not limited to):

People’s relation to their environment (both physical and digital) from the standpoint of toponyms and other place-related names
Names and minorities, the power relationships conveyed by names
Urban toponymy in smart and sustainable cities
Commercial names as a part of sustainable economy
Identity and naming, the rights to express identities via names
Changing names (place names, personal names, commercial names etc.)
Names in the digital world
Names and law-making
Names, traffic and tourism
Onomastics as a sustainable science

Abstract contents

When preparing your paper abstract, please follow these instructions:

The abstract can be written in English, French or German
The paper title should clearly define the topic and must be no longer than 15 words
The body text (including possible references) must be no longer than 300 words
The abstract should logically contain the following issues: objectives, research question(s), and materials and methods
Add 1–5 keywords that describe your research
Possible literature references should use the same referencing style as in Onoma journal (see section 4 in Onoma Style Sheet)

Proposal submission

Paper proposals must be submitted by using the online submission system here: https://confedent.eventsair.com/icos2024/abstractsubmission

When submitting your proposal, you also choose:

presentation type: whether you want to present your paper as an oral presentation or as a poster
theme: whether you offer your paper to general paper session or to one of the thematic workshops

You can find detailed instructions for using the online submission system at the congress website. If you have any problems with the online system, you can contact to icos2024@confedent.fi.

The online system opens on 22 June 2023. The proposals must be submitted by 31 October 2023.

Evaluation

The paper proposals will be evaluated by the members of the scientific committee. The proposals will be accepted or rejected based on their scientific quality, originality and impact.

Papers offered to thematic workshops are evaluated by workshop convenors. If a paper cannot be accepted to a workshop but it fulfills the overall scientific criteria of the congress, it can be included in general paper sessions.

Evaluation results will be sent to the abstract submitters by 31 January 2024.

Download the ICOS 2024 Call for Papers