The ANS is saddened to report the passing of one of the greatest researchers of English linguistics, Professor Randolph Quirk, at the age of 97 on 20 December 2017. The founder of the Survey of English Usage, Professor Quirk’s publications include such legendary works as the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language which he co-authored with Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartik.  Since its initial publication in 1985, this work has been one of the international standards of linguistics references.  In honour of his stellar scholarship, Professor Quirk became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was knighted in 1985.  A detailed biography of this luminary can be found at the University College London website.

The award-winning publisher of Groundwood Books, Sheila Barry, died on November 15 at Mt. Sinai Hospital due to complications from cancer. An advocate for children’s literature that championed the rights of children and adolescents, the Newfoundland native was the publisher of Canadian children’s literature was a trailblazer in the industry. Among the many critically-acclaimed works she helped to bring to the market over the course of her impressive career was the New York Times’ 2017 pick for Best Illustrated Children’s Book: Town is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz and Sydney Smith. Barry’s passion, positivity, and light will be sorely missed but never forgotten.

On the 23rd of October 2017, Iona Opie, internationally recognized folklorist of children’s literature and childlore passed away at the age of 94. Along with her husband, Peter, her legacy includes such publications as The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951) and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959).

Their first publication was I Saw Esau (1947), a slim precursor of the wide spine of The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book (1955). The Opies applied years of rigor to an oral culture too commonplace to have received attention before: their scholarship, informally communicated, was important to the postwar discovery of the words of ordinary people. “It took 50 generations to make up Mother Goose,” Iona said. “Nursery rhymes are the smallest great poems of the world’s literature.”

In the September 2017 Newsletter of the Australian National Placenames Survey, the editors report the death of Vern O’Brien. Affectionately known as the “grand old man of Australian toponymy”, O’Brien was instrumental in researching and documenting the origin of named geographical features throughout the Northern Territories. Among his impressive list of scholarly accomplishments, O’Brien was the Surveyor-General and the Director of Lands in Darwin and served as a prominent member of numerous scholarly toponymic organizations such as the Committee for Geographical Names of Australia, the Genealogical Society of the Northern Territory, and the Historical Society of the Northern Territory.

The officials of the Australian National Placenames Survey (ANPS) recently announced the passing of Australian toponymist, William Noble, the former editor of the ANPS Bulletin.  Among his many publications is the New Holland Dictionary of Names.  This reference offers detailed information on thousands of personal names in Australian use.  William, or “Bill” as he was most often called, is survived by his wife and their three sons.

Bill was the editor of the ANPS Bulletin, the predecessor of Placenames Australia, and designed the original masthead. Bill’s work in toponymy was just one aspect of his wider interest in name studies (onomastics), and in 2003 he published Names from Here and Far, the New Holland Dictionary of Names. The dictionary records and explains thousands of personal names in Australian use and is a celebration of Australia’s ‘glorious mix of names from over 150 cultures’.