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Call for Papers: Hamsa: The Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies

The editors of Hamsa: The Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies are currently accepting proposals for its 5th volume on Muslims and Jews in Latin America. Submissions addressing the names and naming within this subject area are welcome. The main aim of the Hamsa Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies is to create a virtual multi-disciplinary space in which all perspectives of the History, Language and Literature of Jews and Muslims can converge, as well as themes on Judaism and Islam in general. The deadline for submission is April 30, 2018. More details about the journal and the call are available here.

About Names: August, a name with ancient roots, is again in robust usage

Queen Latifah portrayed August in “The Secret Life of Bees.”

Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his August 1 column, he looks at the history of the name August.

In the year 8 B.C. the Roman Senate renamed the month Sextilis after the first Roman emperor, Augustus, whose great military victories came in that month. Around the year 1500, noble families in Germany and Poland, inspired by the emperor’s fame, began using the name. In German and Polish the name was “August,” but these men were usually called “Augustus” in English.

German immigrants brought the form August to the U.S., where, in 1850, the census found 10,320 Augustuses and 3,049 Augusts. There were also 776 men named Auguste, the French form.

2008 was the first year that more than 100 baby girls were named August. In 2016, 222 arrived. If 265 arrive this year, August will make the top thousand for girls as well as boys. Read on to find out more about Augusts in history!

 

Call for Papers: /grafematik/ 2018, Brest, France, June 14-16 2018

“Graphemics in the 21st Century: From Graphemes to Knowledge” is the official theme of an international interdisciplinary conference to be held in Brest, France from the 14th to the 16th of June, 2018. The specific aim of the conference is to collectively explore the growing importance of Unicode with regard to the future of reading and writing. Among the many topics invited for possible presentation include, the cross-disciplinary historical onomastic epistemology of graphemics. The deadline for submission is November 6, 2017.  The conference will be held at IMT Atlantique (formerly Télécom Bretagne). Abstract submission details can be found here.

Call for Papers: Categories and Units in Language and Linguistics (CULL), Wałbrzych, Poland, April 9-10 2018

From the 9th to the 10th of April 2018, a conference entitled “Categories and Units in Language and Linguistics” will be held in Wałbrzych, Poland, at the Angelus Silesius University of Applied Sciences. The purpose of the conference is to bring together scholars of varied disciplines to explore categories and units used in language study, language pedagogy, psychology of language and psychology from a range of perspectives. More specifically, this interdisciplinary conference will address how categories and units influence and/or possibly constrain theory and model-building. The deadline for scientific abstracts is December 20, 2017. The primary language of the conference is English, but presentations in Polish are also welcome. More details about this special event can be found at the website.

Call for Papers: “Rethinking Halal: Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretations”, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, April 24-25 2018

Since the 1980’s, the name “halal” has been increasing used in business and product naming. From halal food-processing to halal fashion, the breadth of goods and services that feature this name has grown dramatically. From the 24th to the 25 of April 2018, a unique conference exploring the modern uses of “halal” labelling will be explored at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Entitled “Rethinking Halal: Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretations”, the conference is currently accepting abstracts for scientific presentations. The call for papers can be found here. Interested researchers are asked to send prospective abstracts (max. 1,000 words) to the following address: halal.conference.ucl.2018 AT gmail.com. The deadline is Monday, 8 January 2018.

We look like our names: Research on face-name matching

Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Does your name match your face?

Researchers at Hebrew University examined a social tag that is associated with us early in life— given names. The hypothesis is that name stereotypes can be manifested in facial appearance, producing a face-name matching effect, whereby both a social perceiver and a computer are able to accurately match a person’s name to his or her face

According to a study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a person’s facial features actually become those we associate with their particular name. Using volunteers, researchers showed each person photos of different people and asked to guess that person’s name (from a list of five).

It turned out people were able to guess the correct name far more often than they would have done by chance. The random chance for getting it right is 20 percent; study participants nailed it a full 35 percent of the time – but only if they shared a culture. Read on to find how more and the implications of this work.

Call for Papers: Association for Low German Linguistic Research, Kiel, Germany, May 21-24

From the 21st to the 24th of May 2018, an onomastic conference on the German language will be held in Kiel. The official call for papers can be found here. The conference is being sponsored by the Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung. Scientific presentations on names and naming in Low German are currently being solicited. The focus will be on “Namenkunde”.  The deadline for submission is October 31, 2017. Researchers interested in holding 45-minute presentations are encouraged to send an abstract (max. 200 words) to the following address: elmentaler AT germsem.uni-kiel.de

Walmart.com in trouble for allowing the n-word in product description

Civil rights leaders have called for a general boycott of the discount retailer Walmart for the use of an offensive product name listed on its website. On Walmart.com. a third-party seller posted a wig cap that reportedly comes in the color “N*****r Brown”. The company quickly removed the product posting from its site, but not before it had been spotted by countless shoppers. Although Walmart has issued a formal apology for that the advertisement it claimed was placed by a third party seller, activists and shop-goers remain incensed that one of the most offensive names in the US language had not been spotted and eliminated before appearing on the site.