Actor John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards in the 1956 film “The Searchers” (AP/Warner Bros.)
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his November 6th column, he looks at the history of the name Ethan.
Ethan is the English form of Hebrew Eitan, “solid, enduring.” Four Ethans are mentioned in the Old Testament. The most famous, Ethan the Ezrahite, wrote Psalm 89, beginning “I will sing of your steadfast love, O LORD, forever.” Ethan was one of the obscure biblical names New England Puritans adopted. Ethan Allen (1738-1789), Vermonter who led the “Green Mountain Boys” at Fort Ticonderoga’s capture from the British in 1775, is the most famous example.
When Edith Wharton published classic novel “Ethan Frome” in 1911, the name was a good choice for a downtrodden New England farmer born around 1860.
In 1956, director John Ford adapted a novel by Alan LeMay into the Western “The Searchers.” John Wayne played Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran searching for his niece, who’s been kidnapped by Comanche raiders. In the novel, the character was “Amos.” Ford changed that to Ethan because Amos was too identified with the comic character from “Amos ’n’ Andy.”
Want to know more? Read on to find out more about Ethans in American history!
The Croatian Association of Researchers in Children’s Literature and the University of Zadar cordially invite researchers to submit a proposal for the 14th International Child and the Book Conference (CBC2019): Beyond the Canon (of Children’s Literature), Zadar, Croatia, 8 – 10 May 2019. For more information, please visit the Conference webpage 
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A new children’s literature journal based in Poland called Childhood: Literature and Culture is accepting articles in either English or Polish. They are devoting the first issue of the journal Dzieciństwo: Literatura i Kultura to consideration on the 21st century trend of adaptation of children’s literature – both film and TV series, presented on cinema and television screens and on streaming platforms (such as Netflix). What are the transformations of childhood constructs relative to literary prototypes? What tendencies are visible in film and TV series adaptations understood as reinterpretations of pre-text books? What literary works are the modern adapters most willing to use and what could be the reasons for their choices? Who is the hypothetical recipient of contemporary film and TV series adaptations?
Together with the Department of Scandinavian Languages at Uppsala University, the Institute for Language and Folklore will host the Sixth International conference on Names in the Economy in Uppsala, Sweden, on 3–5 June 2019. This conference will focus on the economy or the economic aspects that are hidden or evident in various types of names; how names can hold different values and how names can be used or mis-used to create values, how names are used in branding and how names can be means in a global world. More details in Swedish about this event can be found here: