If you are into science fiction and fantasy, chances are you have already heard of Blade, Captain America, Daredevil, Deadpool, Ghost Rider, the Green Goblin, and the Silver Surfer. But how about the names Squirrel Girl, X-23, Cable, Kitty Pryde, Gambit, and Emma Frost? Test your knowledge of Marvel character names!
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Cognitive Toponymy Project
The Royal Society of Edinburgh has initiated an innovative scientific project to investigate how place names are used to help people conceptualize space in Western Europe. The collaborative project involves three of the world’s universities: Glasgow, Copenhagen, and St. Andrews. Read more about the Cognitive Toponymy Project.
Call for Papers: Thirteenth International Conference on Jewish Names, Jerusalem, Israel, August 6-10 2017
The Project for the Study of Jewish Names announces the Thirteenth International Conference on Jewish Names.
The conference will be held as part of the Seventeenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, which will take place from August 6-10, 2017 at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus Campus, Israel.
Call for Papers
The conference committee welcomes papers on all aspects of Jewish onomastics (personal names, family names, epithets and place-names) from the biblical period through the modern age, representing all Jewish communities world-wide and from all fields of research, including Judaic studies, linguistics, literature, sociology, anthropology, genealogy, and toponymics. Papers will be given in Hebrew and English.
Scholars who wish to present papers are requested to send a 200 word abstract, clearly stating contribution, a selected bibliography, and a brief academic profile to the address listed below no later than November 30, 2016.
For further information please contact: Professor Aaron Demsky, Director, Project for the Study of Jewish Names [Aaron.Demsky@biu.ac.il]
Steering Committee: Dr. Yigal Levin, Dr. Tsvi Sadan, and Dr. Stephanie Ginensky
All participants must register for the 17th World Congress of Jewish Studies.
Call for Papers: 26th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Debrecen, Hungary, August 27-September 1 2017
Call for Papers for ICOS 2017:
26th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences / Internationalen Kongresses für Onomastik / Congrès International de Sciences Onomastiques.
27 August – 1 September 2017
University of Debrecen (Debrecen, Hungary)
Locality and globality in the world of names
The central topic of the congress is the linguistic position that proper names occupy in our present globalized world. Proper names as linguistic universals are an ancient linguistic category as old as language itself. They were probably created by the communicational situation in which, relying on linguistic signs fostering distinction, humans wanted to mark the things that were most important in their immediate environment. In fact, this ancient function is the most important reason for the existence and use of proper names even today. Nevertheless, at the same time, proper names may be the most characteristic linguistic representations of the global linguistic situation that has evolved up to our times. Communication in our times does not only make the ever more intensive use of proper names inevitable, but it also endows these with ever newer functions, continuously creating new types and sorts of names.
The wide-ranging central topic of the congress offers a number of possible approaches for speakers. Different questions of onomastic theory will come to the foreground, such as the situation of the variable relationships between particular types of names or their continuous interactions and changes. The presentation of the systematic character of names and their manifestation in different linguistic environments calls both for the study of phenomena and the accurate, thorough analysis of particular names. Besides the (historic and descriptive) aspects traditionally found in linguistics, new aspects may also be raised that have come to the fore over recent decades: e.g. socio- and psycho-onomastic or even cognitive frame sets; and, besides all these, even related disciplines, such as language policies or different approaches of applied science, may come to contribute to our knowledge concerning proper names.
The deadline for paper proposals is 31st October 2016. The program will be finalized in December 2016.
Olympic Games Onomastic Controversy
Amidst all the controversies of the Rio Olympics, there was an onomastic one: It seems that the Taiwanese are more than piqued that their athletes were asked to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei.” According to a CNN interview given by Coen Blaauw, executive director of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs, the name ‘Chinese Taipei’ is “humiliating for the 23 million people of the democratic country of Taiwan”. There are also fears among supporters of Taiwanese independence that the Olympic use of the moniker would help the controversial placename stick. Although Taiwanese activist and Sunflower Movement supporter Huang Kuo-chang stressed that his compatriots “definitely want a peaceful relationship with China,” that does not mean, Kuo-Chang explained, that they should not be forced to sacrifice their own way of life or onomastic identity.
GfN Network of Scholarly Societies for Onomastic Research
The American Name Society and the German Society for Name Research (a.k.a. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Namenforschung) have joined hands in the GfN network of scholarly societies for onomastic research. Other international societies in this network include the International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS), Sweden’s Institute for Language and Folklore, France’s Société Française d’Onomastique (SFO), Spain’s Societat d’Onomàstica (Sd’O), and Italy’s Rivista Italiana di Onomastica (RIOn).
6 Disproportionately Common Names By Profession
Are names indicative of our professions? Verdant Labs put together a chart of the disproportionately common names in each of a wide variety of professions.
What do you call the corner store?
Atlas Obscura looks at the many names we call the “convenience store.”
New Israeli App Helps Parents Choose Baby Names
The Israeli app The Namestork generates name suggestions based on a user’s input of names they like. The app was designed to ease all the list making. According the app’s developers, “a lot of parents already have a general idea about the ‘feeling’ of the name they’re looking for, but they still can’t find the one. The idea is to use a technological solution that will translate this general feeling into a list of names with the highest match potential.”
The most common baby names of Jewish origin
Jews may be only 2 percent of the US population, but Jewish-inspired baby names are generally popular in the United States. Take a look at this analysis.