UK Companies House rejects 50 potentially offensive names

Almost 50 company names were rejected in the UK in 2017 because they were deemed potentially offensive by Companies House, the United Kingdom’s registrar of companies and is an executive agency and trading fund of Her Majesty’s Government. The list of proposed company names rejected  included Blue Arsed Fly Designs Ltd, Fanny’s Kebabs Ltd, Titanic Holdings Limited, and Wags to Bitches Limited. Some of the names may have been added later if justification was accepted. A Companies House spokesperson said it was important the register was not abused by recording offensive names.

There are more than 100 sensitive words and expressions that require the prior approval of the secretary of state to use in a company or business name. These words include benevolent, Britain/British, commission, inspectorate, licensing, standards and Windsor.

Want to know more? Click through to this article at BBC News!

In Memoriam: Randolph Quirk, linguist and UCL scholar

The ANS is saddened to report the passing of one of the greatest researchers of English linguistics, Professor Randolph Quirk, at the age of 97 on 20 December 2017. The founder of the Survey of English Usage, Professor Quirk’s publications include such legendary works as the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language which he co-authored with Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartik.  Since its initial publication in 1985, this work has been one of the international standards of linguistics references.  In honour of his stellar scholarship, Professor Quirk became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was knighted in 1985.  A detailed biography of this luminary can be found at the University College London website.

Call for Papers: 28th international conference on British and American Studies (B.A.S.), Timisoara, Romania, May 17-19 2018

From the 17th to the 19th of May 2018, the city of Timisoara, Romania will be the host of an international conference on British and American Studies.  Among the topics of discussion at this scientific gathering are translation studies, British and Commonwealth Literature, Cultural Studies, and American Studies.  Researchers who are interested in presenting their scholarship are encouraged to submit a 60-word abstract by the 15th of February 2018.  More information on the submission process and the conference can be found via the conference website. The Call for Papers can be found here.

Cleve Evans on 2017’s Top Baby Names in the Providence Journal

Names parents choose for babies meld tradition, fashion, pop culture, ethnicity into a unique identity. The Health Department of the state of Rhode Island has provided the 10 most popular names for boys and for girls.

While simple — Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Charlotte, Isabella, Ava, Amelia, Mia, Aria and Abigail for girls; Liam, Lucas, Noah, Julian, Mason, Benjamin, Matthew, Michael, Logan and Joseph for boys — the names evidence the weighty decisions parents must make, balancing fashion with tradition, ethnic identity with popular culture, names that sound unique with ones that just sound weird.

“One of the commonest things parents are always telling me is they’re looking for a name that’s different, but not too different,” Cleveland Kent Evans, a psychology professor at Nebraska’s Bellevue University and a leading expert in how babies are named, told The Providence Journal in a previously published interview. “Culturally, one of the biggest factors now is not to have a common name. Somehow they think it’s child abuse if a kid gets into a kindergarten class and there’s another child with the same name.”

Want to know more? Read on!

How 16 Companies Picked Their Names

One of the biggest challenges of setting up a new  business is coming up with a name that will catch the public’s attention in a positive way.  In this article by Glen Stansberry at American Express OPEN Forum, readers can learn how 16 major companies came up with their names. Here’s a sample:

 2. Hotmail

Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith had the idea of checking their e-mail on a web interface, and tried to find a name that ended in “mail.” They finally settled on “hotmail” because it contained the letters html, referencing the HTML programming language used to help create the product.

 6. Cisco

Contrary to popular belief and theories, Cisco is simply short for San Francisco. Its logo resembles the suspension cables found on the Golden Gate bridge.

8. Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s name comes from the the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring in the soft drink. Eventually Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the K of kola to C to create a more fluid name.

“Rohingya” Chosen 2017 Name of the Year

Rohingya displaced Muslims, Tasnim News Agency, Author: Seyyed Mahmoud Hosseini

“Rohingya” was chosen the Name of the Year for 2017 by the American Name Society at its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 5, 2018.

The Myanmar army has targeted the Rohingya, an Islamic group, and has perpetrated massacres that have the earmarks of genocide. Myanmar’s government has tried to prevent people, including Pope Francis, from using the name Rohingya. The UN’s Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has said “To strip their name from them is dehumanising to the point where you begin to believe that anything is possible.”

Maria was chosen ANS’s Personal Name of the Year. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in September. The irony of a name associated by many in Puerto Rico with the Virgin Mary’s compassion being given to a storm whose aftermath has led to questioning the compassion of the federal government was cited by ANS members as a reason for the choice before the vote.

#MeToo was chosen as the Miscellaneous Name of the Year. This is the name of a movement encouraging those who have been sexually assaulted or harassed to share their experiences by using the #MeToo hashtag on various social media platforms.

Charlottesville was chosen as the Place Name of the Year.  This Virginia college town became a symbol of racism and resistance to it when an alt-right/Neo-Nazi march there on August 12 resulted in the death of counterprotestor Heather Heyer, and Donald Trump later referred to some of the white nationalist protestors as “good people.”

Nambia was chosen as Fictional Name of the Year. In September, President Trump lavished praise on the health care system of Nambia during a speech at the United Nations. Just one little problem: There is no such country. (Trump may have meant Namibia, an actual African country.) Trump mentioned “Nambia” twice in the speech.

The American Name Society is a scholarly organization founded in 1951 devoted to studying all aspects of names and naming. The Name of the Year vote has been held since 2004. “Aleppo“ was the 2016 Name of the Year. “Caitlyn Jenner” won for 2015, “Ferguson” for 2014, “Francis” for 2013, and “Sandy” for 2012.

For further information contact Dr. Cleveland Evans, chair of the Name of the Year committee, at cevans@bellevue.edu or 402-210-7458.

Call for Papers: LRI 4 Workshop, Language Policy – Language Use – Language Standard, Merano, Italy, June 7-8 2018

The 4th Workshop of the Linguistic Colloquium: Language, Region, Identity (LRI 4) will be held from the 7th to the 8th of June 2018 in Merano, Italy.  The purpose of this colloquium is to foster scientific exchanges within the Alpine region of Italy, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.  The specific areas of linguistic research to be covered in the workshop include Applied Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Sociolinguistics. The theme of the workshop is “Language Policy – Language Use – Language Standard”.  New researchers (PhD students and post-docs) are especially encouraged to submit an abstract for possible presentation.  The deadline for submission is February 15, 2018.  You can find the official Call for Papers here, and more information at the LRI website.

Nameberry’s Top 100 baby-name list for 2017

Pamela Redmond Satran of Nameberry, the world’s largest baby name site, has put together a list of the top 100 girls’ and boys names for 2017 – and there are a ton of new entries!

The list measures which names attract the largest share of the site’s nearly 250 million page views, versus how many babies actually receive that name. It’s a gauge of parents’ interest in baby names, and a predictor of which names will become more popular in the future.

The top names? Atticus leapt to No. 1 on the boys’ list, and Olivia held down the No. 1 spot for girls. New entrants besides Maia on the girls’ side are Rumi, the name of Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby daughter, along with Alexandra, Allegro, Brielle, Celeste, and Elena.

Want to check out both lists? Head over to this article at Today to find out more!