2025 American Name Society Annual Meeting, February 22, 2025
2025 ANS Annual Conference (Online, via Zoom, 22 February 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.
Saturday, February 22, 2025
ALL TIMES ARE UTC -8:00, PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Conference Opening Address
5:15 AM Brandon Simonson (Boston University, MA, USA), Welcome and Opening Remarks
First Session
5:30 AM Nihan Ketrez (Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey), Anthropomorphism in puppy and kitten names in Holly Webb’s children’s books and their translations
6:00 AM Anna Tsepkova (Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Russia): A Cross-cultural Analysis of Terms Applied to Unconventional Anthroponyms in American and Russian Onomastic Practices [Withdrawn]
6:30 AM Veronika Robustova (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia): Proper Names As Means of Cultural and Historic Information Transfer
Second Session
7:00 AM Ayokunmi Ojebode (University of Nottingham, UK), Abimbola Alao (Independent Scholar, UK), and Victoria Tischler (University of Surrey, UK): Cross-cultural Names and Identities as Dementia Behaviours in Abimbola Alao’s ‘My Name is Beatrice’ and Trevor Smith’s ‘An Evening with Dementia’
7:30 AM Maria Kopf (Universität Hamburg, Germany): Name Changes and Name Co-existence in Deaf Signing Communities in Germany
8:00 AM Thomas Ditye (Sigmund Freud University, Austria): The fear of saying personal names
8:30 AM I.M. Nick (Germanic Society for Forensic Linguistics, Germany): Names: A Journal of Onomastics Editor’s Report
9:00 AM Break
9:30 AM ANS Committees Meeting
Third Session
10:00 AM Lennart Chevallier (Kiel University, Germany) and Sören Wichmann (Kiel University, Germany): Mapping place names
10:30 AM Jarmo Jantunen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), Tehri Ainiala University of Helsinki, Finland), Salla Jokela (Tampere University, Finland), and Jenny Tarvainen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): Mapping Digital Discourses of the Capital Region of Finland: Combining Onomastics, CADS, and GIS
11:00 AM Russell Fielding (Coastal Carolina University, SC, USA): “A Change of Name during Sickness”: Surveying the Widespread Practice of Renaming in Response to Physical Illness
Fourth Session
11:30 AM Anuoluwapọ Adéwùnmí ADÉTỌ̀MÍWÁ (University of Lagos, Nigeria): Anthroponymy and cultural identity: the significance of akan and yorùbá personal names
12:00 PM Hanna Virranpää (University of Helsinki, Finland): Place names used by the first-generation Finnish Americans: examining migration letters
12:30 PM Mary Ann Walter (University of the Virgin Islands, USA): Femininity and Phonetics in Drag Names
1:00 PM Michael Akinpelu (University of Regina, SK, Canada), Dr. Hasiyatu Abubakari (University of Ghana Accra, Ghana), and Dr. Michel Nguessan (Governors State University, IL, USA): A Comparative Study of Divine Names Across African Languages and Cultures
1:30 PM ANS Annual Business Meeting
Fifth Session
2:30 PM Kenneth Price (Texas A&M University, TX, USA): Promoting Onomastics in Travel Writing: Multimodal Travel Toponymies
3:00 PM U-ri Go (Kangwon National University, Korea) and Jong-mi Kim (Kangwon National University, Korea): From Masculine to Feminine Naming Evolution: A Comparative Phonological Analysis of 18 Regions across Four Continents (1880-2023)
3:30 PM Cari Didion (Governors State University, IL, USA): Names and Brand Identity of Ethnic Businesses in Greater Chicago
Sixth Session
4:00 PM David Wade (Wade Research Foundation, USA): Name Peptides @ The University
4:30 PM Alexander Kilpatrick (Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, Japan): Machine Learning vs. Linear Regression: A Case Study on Gender Sound Symbolism in Japanese Given Names
5:00 PM Jinawat Kaenmuang (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand): Flavorful labels and elegant expressions: The role of culinary elements and rhetorical devices in Thai food shops’ nomenclature
5:30 PM Sarah Bunin Benor (Hebrew Union College, CA, USA): Shaina, Bamba, and Ruth Betta Finsberg: Trends in American Jews’ Naming of Pets
Closing
ANS Panel at the Linguistic Society of America Conference
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 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:
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.
ANS Panel at the Modern Language Association Conference
The ANS will host a panel at the MLA 2025 conference, which will be held 9 to 12 January 2025 in New Orleans.
For further information, please contact Dr. Anne W. Anderson (AWAnderson.Editing@gmail.com).
For more information about the 2024 conference, click here.
Past ANS Conferences
For programs from past American Name Society conferences, click here.
Other Onomastic Conferences
For other onomastic conferences, click here.