Seeking New ANS Officers for 2020

Ever thought about getting more involved with the American Name Society but did not know how?  Here is your opportunity!  The American Name Society is currently looking for a few good people who are interested in joining the Executive Council.  Starting January 2020, new officers will be needed to fill the positions listed below.

To apply for one or more of these positions, please fill out the application form on this page.

 

Secretary (2020-2022)

The person in this position serves as a voting member of the ANS Executive Council and its various committees (e.g., the Nominating Committee).  Aside from these duties, the Secretary is responsible for taking and disseminating the official minutes from the ANS Business Meetings, creating the ANS newsletters, and sending our ANS members announcements regarding important events (e.g., the Nominating Committee’s Slate). The ideal candidate for this position must have outstanding writing and editing skills in English and be comfortable working with email mailing programs like MailChimp.

Membership Officer (2020-2022)

In addition to being a voting member of the ANS Executive Council (EC), the person in this office is responsible for managing the ANS membership database, both institutional and individual.  To accomplish this task, this officer must liaison with ANS members, the ANS Executive Council, the ANS Treasurer, and Taylor and Francis, the current publisher of the ANS Journal, NAMES. The person selected for this position must be computer literate and be comfortable working with spreadsheets.

Allied Conference Coordinator (2020-2022)

The person elected to this position is principally responsible for organizing the ANS session at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association. This activity involves issuing a call for papers, assembling a team of abstract reviewers, selecting three authors whose work will be presented at the MLA conference, and coordinating the presentation of the three winning abstracts with the MLA administration. In addition to these duties, as a voting member of the ANS Executive Council (EC), the Allied Conference Coordinator participates in the legislative decision-making of the Society. Although the term of service for this position is for two years, the holder of this office may be re-elected pending approval by the EC. Given the fact that this position requires close communication with the MLA, candidates who have a demonstrated expertise in literary onomastics will receive preference.

Member-at-large (2020-2022)

The person elected to this position will serve as a voting member of the Executive Council (EC) and is expected to participate actively in the legislative decision-making involved in resolutions and motions placed before the EC.  In addition to these duties, members-at-large serve on various auxiliary sub-committees to, for example, help with the nomination of new officers, coordination of the annual conference, and organization of allied conferences.  Officers in this position can renew their term of service twice.

 

Los Angeles has renamed a street after former President Obama

The City of Los Angeles has renamed a nearly 4-mile stretch of road from “Rodeo Road” to “Obama Boulevard,” in honor of the country’s first African-American president.

The location is significant, the city said, because Obama held his first campaign rally in Los Angeles on February 20, 2007, at Rancho Cienega Park. The park sits on Rodeo Road, right across from W. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Rodeo Road, which runs through a historic black neighborhood, is not the first strip to be named in honor of former presidents. The district where the road sits is also home to Washington Boulevard, Adams Boulevard and Jefferson Boulevard.

Royal baby Name of the 7th in line to the British throne revealed

The waiting game is over. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have named their first child, a son born on the 6th May 2019, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The royal couple made the announcement today via their official Instagram account, ending several days of feverish speculation about the baby’s name.

Archie became the 7th in line to the British throne the instant he was born, but he won’t be called “his royal highness,” as the rules around the granting of royal titles were tightened up about 100 years ago. Britain’s booming betting business had shown before Wednesday’s announcement that a lot of punters expected the new baby to be named Alexander, Arthur, Philip or a handful of other go-to historical British royal names.

Washington State’s bummer place names

Many of our towns and geographical features have names to match. Some of these names, although blunt, really tell their own story: Mount Terror, for example, or Foulweather Bluff.

A lot of those origins seem weather-related. In one case, an explorer couldn’t find something because of the fog. In a few cases, an expedition – or a group of cattlemen – got stuck somewhere kind of miserable and inconvenient during a harsh winter. Others are almost a personal vendetta towards the places themselves: Deception Pass, Mount Horrible, Useless Bay.

It’s notable that most of these places had perfectly serviceable names before white explorers came along and gave their own bummer spin while drawing their maps. Find the map and all names here.

Call for papers: Frisian Linguistics, October 25 2019, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

The Linguistics Circle of the Frisian Academy (Fryske Akademy) organizes its annual meeting in October 2019. The 10th Conference on Frisian Linguistics will be of interest to anyone who actively or passively participates in Frisian linguistics: grammar, phonetics/phonology, onomastics, lexicology, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics. Papers may focus on the results of scientific research, but presentations of research plans, of speculations or of language corpora are also welcome. They may be presented in any of the West-Germanic languages.

To participate, please, send an abstract – as soon as possible, but not later than August 1 – of half A4, with name and address, to Eric Hoekstra (secretary of the Linguistics Circle), e-mail: ehoekstra@fryske-akademy.nl

Pronounce foreign names like a polyglot

In public radio they do our utmost to get things right, including the pronunciation of names and places. It shows they know their stuff and conveys respect — for the people they report about and the people who make up audiences.

But words in other languages can be difficult to say on air, and some public radio listeners bristle at hearing names enunciated with non-English accents. As a multilingual journalist who spent nearly two decades reporting from overseas, Jerome Socolovsky has thought a lot about how to name people and places in a way that is accurate and understandable to listeners. What do you do? Here’s a guide.

India Is Changing Some Cities’ Names

Last year, officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj — a word that references the Hindu pilgrimage site there. The name Allahabad dated to the 16th century, a legacy of a Muslim ruler, the Mughal Emperor Akbar.

Allahabad’s renaming has made headlines not for the hassles of changing signs, but for a growing trend of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics. Over the past five years of Modi’s term as prime minister, Hindu nationalist politicians from the BJP have renamed Indian towns, streets, airports and one of the country’s biggest train stations, swapping names that reflect Muslim heritage for Hinducentric ones.

L.A. City Council expected to rename intersection after the late rapper Nipsey Hussle

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to change the name of a South L.A. intersection to honor late rapper Nipsey Hussle. Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he will officially submit a motion to rename the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue to “Nipsey Hussle Square.”

Nipsey Hussle, whose real name is Ermias Asghedom, had a song called “Crenshaw and Slauson (True Story)”. A nearly 12-minute documentary-style music video for the song features real people from the Crenshaw neighborhood, where Nipsey Hussle grew up. His store, Marathon Clothing, is also located at this intersection. The Grammy-nominated rapper was shot, along with two other people, while standing outside of his store.

Standardization of geographical names – why does it matter?

In today’s digital world, standardized geographical names are vital. They help us find our way in society and they also help us organize the world we live in. They also play a key role in our efforts to achieve sustainable development, providing fundamental channels of communication, facilitating cooperation among local, national and international organizations.

This month, the “new” United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) will convene for its 2019 Session from 29 April to 3 May 2019 at UN Headquarters in New York. The session, organized by UN DESA’s Statistics Division, brings together over 150 experts from national naming authorities and academia to discuss strategies and methodologies by which the standardization of geographical names can be advanced.

Call for Papers: ANS 2020, New Orleans, LA, January 2-5, 2020

The American Name Society (ANS) is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. The 2020 conference will be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America. Abstracts in any area of onomastic research are welcome. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is July 30, 2019. To submit a proposal, simply complete the 2020 Author Information Form.

Please email this completed form to ANS Vice President Laurel Sutton using the following address: <laurelasutton@gmail.com>. For organizational purposes, please be sure to include the phrase “ANS 2020” in the subject line of your email.  Presenters who may need additional time to secure international payments and travel visas to the United States are urged to submit their proposal as soon as possible.

All proposals will be subjected to blind review. Official notification of proposal acceptances will be sent on or before September 30, 2019. All authors whose papers have been accepted must be current members of the ANS and need to register with both the ANS and the Linguistic Society of America. Please feel free to contact Dr. Dorothy Dodge Robbins or Laurel Sutton should you have any questions or concerns.

A downloadable PDF of the Call for Papers can be found here.

We look forward to receiving your submission!