The American Name Society is pleased to share the ANS Summer 2023 Newsletter.
On Tuesday the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques released data revealing the top baby names in France in the year 2022.
For Girls:
For Boys:
Noah, number 6 on France’s list, made the number 2 spot in the United States. Likewise, Lucas appears as #10 in France and #7 in the United States with the variant Luca as #10. France’s #5 Emma appears in the #3 spot in the United States.
Read more from the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques here [in French] or a brief video report from HugoDecrypte on YouTube. Also, check out Dr. Cleveland Evans’ piece on the top baby names in the United States for 2022.
The Authors of the 2022 Best Article of the Year (clockwise from top row left): Terhi Ainiala, Jarmo Jantunen, Jenny Tarvainen, and Salla Jokela
The international team of the NAMES Editorial Board selected the article “Mapping Digital Discourses of the Capital Region of Finland: Combing Onomastics, CADS, and GIS” for the Best Article of the Year for 2022. The winning publication was co-authored by Jarmo Harri Jantunen (University of Jyväskylä), Terhi Ainiala (University of Helsinki), Salla Jokela (Tampere University), and Jenny Tarvainen (University of Jyväskylä). The outstanding piece of onomastic research appears in volume 70, issue 1 of NAMES. This article, along with every other issue of NAMES ever released, can be viewed via the NAMES website.
The Authors of the 2021 Best Article of the Year (clockwise from top row left): Michal Boleslav Měchura, Angus Ó Fionnagáin, Brian Ó Raghallaigh, and Sophie Osborne
The results are in for Best Article of the Year 2021! Each year, the editorial board of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics selects the one article they feel exemplifies the best of research into names and naming. Thanks to COVID, the deliberation process was somewhat delayed. However, the ANS is very happy to announce the 2021 winner of NAMES Best Article of the Year Award is “Developing the Gaois Linguistic Database of Irish-language Surnames” which appeared in volume 69, issue 1 of NAMES. The superior piece of scholarship on Irish-language surname was co-authored by Limerick University’s Aengus O’ Fionnagáin, and Brian O’ Raghallaigh, Michal Boleslav Měchura, and Sophie Osborne of Dublin City University. The winning article, along with every issue of NAMES, can be viewed via the NAMES website.
Nobel laureate Bob Dylan singing in the Opinião night club in Brazil (Photo: Public Domain)
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his July 2nd column, he discusses the name “Dylan”.
Did you watch Dylan help his team win the College World Series?
LSU outfielder Dylan Crews (born 2002) won the Golden Spikes Award for best amateur baseball player June 25, the day before the Tigers beat Florida to win 2023’s CWS. Last year Ole Miss pitcher Dylan DeLucia won the CWS Most Outstanding Player award leading his team to a CWS title in 2022. Today he pitches for the Cleveland Guardians.
Dylan’s a modern name with an ancient origin. The Mabinogion, Welsh legends compiled from oral traditions around 1175, tell of Dylan ail Don, who at his baptism plunges into the sea, swimming away like a fish. Experts think Dylan was originally a Welsh sea god whose name meant “toward the tide.”
There’s no evidence Dylan was a baby name in Wales before 1910, when Welsh nationalists discovered it. The first census example, Dylan Mostyn Wathen, born 1910, lived with widowed innkeeper mother Hannah in Ystradgynlais in 1911.
The Dylan who spread the name worldwide was born 1914 in Swansea to Jack Thomas and wife Florence. They were fluent Welsh speakers who knew Dylan’s first syllable was pronounced “dull” in Welsh. Florence, afraid of teasing, insisted “dill” be used when English was spoken.
Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Dylan”!
Amelia Earhart, one of the more famous Amelias in recent history, about to take off as a crowd of onlookers admire her plane and watch the famous aviator take to the skies (Photo: Public Domain)
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his June 18th column, he discusses the name “Amelia”.
Amelia became famous 95 years ago today.
Amelia Earhart, Kansas-born in 1897, was log keeper on a plane that landed in Wales on June 18, 1928, becoming first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Though Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon were pilot and co-pilot, the flight made Earhart famous. She was declared “Queen of the Air,” a title cemented when she piloted a solo cross-Atlantic flight in May 1932. Today she’s remembered for her mysterious disappearance over the Pacific July 2, 1937, while trying to circumnavigate the globe.
Amelia’s a variation of Amalia, a Latinized short form of German names like Amalburg and Amalgund. Germanic “amal” meant “vigorous.” Its use in names honored the Amali, a fifth-century dynasty leading Goths attacking the Roman empire.
Amelia was rare in England until the German Hanoverians inherited Britain’s throne in 1714. Princess Amelia (1711-1786), daughter of George II, loved riding and hunting. Amelia County, Virginia, and Amelia Island, Florida, were named for her. Her great-niece Princess Amelia (1783-1810) was the youngest and favorite daughter of George III.
Amelia rather than Amalia became the common English form through confusion with Emilia, which has a separate Latin origin. Both Princesses Amelia were nicknamed “Emily.”
Novelists further popularized the name. The heroine of Henry Fielding’s “Amelia” (1751) saves her husband from gambling debts. In William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” (1848), Amelia Sedley is the sweet naïve contrast to conniving seductive Becky Sharp.
The 1850 American census found 29,484 Amelias. In 1851, the British census included 32,243.
Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Amelia”!
The editorial board of Onoma, journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences publishing in English, German, or French, seeks contributions to a themed volume (number 59 to appear in 2024) on the study of names in America (i.e., as they are used or applied in North, Central, or South America, or as they may be studied by scholars from those regions). The subject matter is open (i.e., place names, personal names, commercial names, or names in literature). Guidelines may be found on the Onoma website: https://onomajournal.org
Please send abstracts of about 250 words to the principal guest-editor, Grant Smith (gsmith@ewu.edu), and to the co-guest-editors, Yolanda Guillermina López Franco (yolalf1@yahoo.com.mx) and Márcia Sipavicius Seide (marciaseda4@hotmail.com). Abstracts must be received by July 15, 2023, recommendations or acceptance will be sent by August 1, 2023, and final drafts must be completed by February 11, 2024.
The American Dialect Society will hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America Thursday, January 4, through Sunday, January 7, 2024, in New York, NY. The meeting will be held at the Sheraton Times Square.
Please read these instructions carefully as they have changed from previous years.
Monday, August 28, 2023 is the deadline for poster and 20-minute paper proposals.
Proposals should address topics related to English varieties in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages that influence or are influenced by these varieties. We also encourage topics related to lexicography, linguistic atlas projects, linguistic landscapes, language and society, and public language-awareness programs.
Important: You should only include the title of the study at the top of the abstract. Do not include your name or other identifying information on the abstract. Abstracts that include author’s names will not be considered. Please indicate in your abstract if the proposal is for a paper or poster. Do not send the same proposal to both ADS and LSA, and do not submit proposals based on research that has been previously presented elsewhere (e.g., NWAV).
Submissions are limited to two per author, one paper and one poster, one of which must be co-authored. If you submit two co-authored proposals with the same or different co-author(s), only one proposal can be for a paper and the other must be for a poster.
Posters: At this meeting the poster session will be online in Gather, an online community platform. We encourage those of you who may not be able to attend the meeting in-person to submit a proposal for the poster session.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words as a PDF will be submitted, reviewed, and processed for ADS2024 via the EasyChair system using the following website:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ads2024
Three important notes about submitting through EasyChair, especially if you’re new to this system: (1) because EasyChair publishes conference proceedings, you’ll see the option to upload a complete paper—just ignore that option; (2) EasyChair is based in England and its clock keeps Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), so submissions will close automatically at 23:59 GMT, which is not a North American end of the day. We recommend submitting your abstract on or before August 27th because the system will not accept late submissions; and (3) the system will not allow you to upload an abstract longer than 500 words, including title, references, etc. If the system won’t accept your submission, check to see if you’ve inadvertently exceeded the word limit.
Proposals will be judged anonymously by a minimum of two reviewers. If your proposal is accepted, you’ll be asked for an abstract of no more than 100 words for the LSA program.
Presenters must be current members of the American Dialect Society.
For more information, check out the website of the American Dialect Society.
After much discussion, the ANS-EC has decided to break from tradition in 2024. Rather than holding one annual conference in January, we plan to hold several events over the course of the year:
January: We will hold the Name of the Year discussion (date TBD). This event will be free and last approximately 2 hours.
February: We will hold a one-day conference, possibly in partnership with another scholarly organization focused on onomastics. When we have a Call for Papers, we will send it out to the ANS membership.
Summer/Fall: We expect to hold at least one more one-day conference, which might be focused on onomastics in Europe or Asia. We have many members in China, Korea, and Japan, and we think a conference that is suited to the Pacific time zone would be welcomed!
Stay tuned for more information on our planned activities in 2024!
We are pleased to announce that all recorded presentations from the 2023 Annual meeting have now been uploaded to our YouTube channel. There are 31 videos, representing outstanding onomastics scholarship from members all over the world. Please visit our YouTube channel to view these videos, as well as those from the 2022 and 2021 Annual Conferences!
