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About Names: Is ‘Star Wars’-inspired moniker the chosen one among parents picking baby names?
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his May 23 column, he looks at the influence of popular media like Star Wars on the most popular baby names of 2016.
Riley shot up 18 percent last year, twice as fast as the year before. Two Disney characters helped: Riley Matthews (played by Rowan Blanchard), the title character of the Disney Channel’s recently canceled “Girl Meets World,” and Riley Andersen, the girl whose personified emotions Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear are the chief characters in Pixar’s animated film “Inside Out.”
Social Security’s website divulges names among the top 1,000 that made the biggest jumps in 2015. Kylo skyrocketed from 3,269th to 901st. Thirty-five were born in 2015 and 238 last year. It wasn’t just the new characters: Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa inspired a 32 percent leap in girls named Leia. Last year, 1,005 were born.
Of course pop culture can also hurt a name’s popularity. Alexa fell 19 percent last year. Perhaps parents don’t want their daughter to share a name with Amazon’s electronic personal assistant.
NameSummit 2017: A Digital Branding Conference, New York, NY, August 7-8 2017
From the 7th to the 8th of August 2017, NameSummit 2017, an international conference on domain names, will be held at the Hilton Midtown Manhattan. The purpose of this conference is to provide a forum for experts in digital branding to discuss the latest trends in domain name selection and marketing. Information about the conference program and registration process can be found at the website.
NameSummit 2017 is bringing the best of the entrepreneurial and digital branding worlds to share their expertise in establishing a digital presence that excites, inspires, and generates ROI. Building a digital brand — from domain name selection and market analysis, to creating a comprehensive web presence — requires stamina, strategy, and constant attention to trends. NameSummit 2017’s digital branding and domain industry leaders are here to show beginners and pros how to bring their businesses to market, capture customer engagement, and keep them connected.
TOTh 2017: 11th International Conference on Terminology and Ontology, Chambéry, France, June 8-9 2017
From the 8th to the 9th of June 2017, the University of Savoie in Chambéry, France will be hosting the 11th International Conference on Terminology and Ontology (TOTh). The theme for this year’s conference is “Theories and Applications”. Details about the conference can be found at the website, and the program can be downloaded here.
The conference is intended to bring together researchers, professionals and, more generally, all those whose concerns are related to language and knowledge engineering. The conference will cover areas like language for special purposes, specialized lexicography, translation, corpus analysis, lexicon, dictionary, and terminology.
New York City dog names: Max, Leia, and Spock
Databases of baby names are easy to find, but what about dog names? The New York City Health Department has made public its database of dog names collected from licenses.The interactive map lets you explore with your mouse or search for specific names. Each bubble on the map represents a dog name by frequency of occurrence – foe example, there are 1,195 dogs named Bella and 1,153 named Max, but only 7 named Spock and just one named Kirk. (Well, there is only one Captain Kirk.) Check it out and see how popular your favorite puppy names are in NYC!
Bonnie + Clyde = 3 capybara babies that need names
Last year, the Toronto High Park Zoo become the unwitting center of a crime scene when Zoo officials reported that not one but two of its residents had escaped. The furry fugitives known to officials as “Bonnie” and Clyde” were members of the South American rodent clan known as Capybara. For those who have never come across this group name before, Capybara are BIG in the world of rodentia and have been known to reach 200 pounds! (Think GINORMOUS guinea pig. And yes, before you ask, “ginormous” IS in the dictionary…along with humongous.) Given their conspicuous appearance, it probably comes as no surprise that the two love-struck runaways were eventually captured and returned to the zoo in the late Spring of 2016. However, nearly a year later, the dynamic duo is making headlines again. It seems that Bonnie and Clyde are now the proud parents of three baby capybara. Zoo officials have taken suggestions from the public for names for these rodent triplets and will announce the winners very soon!
Rose Hork and Stanky Bean: What happens when a neural network names paint colors
Janelle Shane, a research scientist with a penchant for silliness, decided to train a neural network to generate new paint colors, complete with appropriate names. The results are hilariously bad, and range from the impenetrable (“Dondarf” for a lovely shade of cornflower blue) to the almost-there (“Ghasty Pink”, the color of Pepto-Bismol). Ars Technica has the details on how she did the training.
Her conclusions: “1. The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey; 2. The neural network has really, really bad ideas for paint names.” Professional namers need not worry about losing business to AI just yet.
(She has also done a similar experiment with superhero names, and it went about as well as you would expect.)
MOAB: How “the mother of all” became a name
In 2003, the United States tested a new weapon for possible use during the Iraq War. That weapon was officially named the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast or “MOAB” for short. Over time, that acronym underwent a curious onomastic shift in which the root full-form was replaced by a new name: “Mother of All Bombs”. According to the Business Insider journalist, Mark Abadi, this nickname was coined as a play on Saddam Hussein’s 1991 prediction that the Gulf War would be remembered in history as “the mother of all battles”. That phrase caught on fire and soon everything was being described as “the mother of all…”. 14 years later, this name re-surfaced once again when the US dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb, or the “mother of all bombs”, in northeast Afghanistan. The Oxford Dictionaries blog has a detailed history of the phrase.
Animal Naming: International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
Ever wonder who or what is responsible for making sure that every living creature has an official scientific name? Just one of the scholarly societies that helps to shoulder this momentous task is the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature or ICZN. The ICZN is responsible for ensuring that the system of names used for the animal kingdom is internationally uniform and accepted. Founded in 1895, the ICZN currently is made up of 27 members from 18 different countries around the world. Given the millions different recognized animal species that walk, crawl, hop, slither, swim, glide, pounce, or wiggle about on, over, or below the Earth’s surface today, the commission certainly has its work cut out for it. Interested in learning more about the types of names that can be proposed, the animals waiting for a new or revised moniker, or the buying and selling of scientific names? The answers to those questions and many, many more, can be found here.
Persuasive Cartography: The PJ Mode Collection
Contrary to popular belief, maps do not offer a neutral, objective view of the world but reflect the sociocultural perspectives, personal political opinions, religious beliefs, and underlying commercial objectives of the people who create them. In cooperation with Cornell University, map specialist PJ Mode has assembled a fascinating collection of more than 800 examples of persuasive cartography. Visitors to this historical e-collection will be surprised and quite likely shocked by the power of cartography to affect public opinion. Browse the collection or learn more here.
“Every map has a Who, What, Where and When about it. But these maps had another element: Why? Since they were primarily “about” something other than geography, understanding the map required finding the reasoning behind it. Each time I acquired one of these maps, I tried to solve that puzzle. As the internet developed, it became easier to come across these “curiosities” – and easier to research their raison d’etre.”
-PJ Mode