Long time ANS member and Past President Edwin D. Lawson of Fredonia, died peacefully July 3, 2021, at the age of 97.
Ed was born in Chicago, Ill., on Dec. 23, 1923, to Anna and Abraham Levin. When Ed was seven the family moved to Boston where he was raised.
After graduating from high school in 1942, Ed matriculated to the University of Illinois, but after one semester he was called up for active duty in the U.S. Army Air Force to fight in World War II. As a tail gunner on a B-29 bomber he completed 38 missions in the Pacific and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with Three Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Purple Heart.
After the war, Ed returned to the University of Illinois, where he earned a bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. in psychology. He taught at several universities, and in 1967, he joined the faculty of the State University of New York, Fredonia, where he served until his retirement in 1989.
Ed married Irene Kentner in 1949. They were united in marriage for 69 years and raised three sons together.
In addition to teaching and research, Ed published over 160 books and articles over the course of his career. He had a sabbatical year in Jerusalem, Israel in 1973-74, and was awarded a Fulbright lectureship to Yarmouk University in Jordan in 1981. In addition to his professional activities, Ed was active in the American Name Society and the 500th Bomb Group Memorial Association.
Read his full obituary in The Dunkirk Observer, and share condolences on the Larson-Timko Funeral Home page.
The American Name Society is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. After serious deliberation of an official proposal made on the 5th of May 2021, the Executive Council of the American Name Society unanimously voted to hold the 2022 Annual Conference online. All presentation sessions will be held online during the three days of the conference. This means that our conference will NOT be held in conjunction with the LSA meeting, which is still slated to be held in person, January 2022 in Washington, DC.
ANS President, linguist, and co-founder of naming agency Catchword Laurel Sutton writes about the ethics of rebranding in 
The latest issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics is now available online! 
Long-time ANS member Ronald Richard Butters 81, passed away in his home on April 6, 2021 after a long battle with cancer. Ron was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in February of 1940. After achieving his PhD at the University of Iowa, he moved to Durham, NC to begin his 40 year career at Duke University. He was a professor of English and Linguistics as well as a founder of the linguistics program at Duke University and held a joint appointment in the Cultural Anthropology Department at Duke. Following his retirement from Duke University in 2007, he developed a consulting firm called Trademark Linguistics and continued working in the field with many distinguished law firms.
