The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources will be holding several special sessions on cross-linguistic and cross-cultural onomastics at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2016 from the 4th to the 7th of July 2016.
Images
Anniversary of the LGBT-inclusive preferred name and pronoun policy approval
2016 marks the first year anniversary of Ohio University’s historic decision to recognize the right of OU students to have their preferred name and pronoun used on official university listings such as class rosters, advising lists, and student ID cards.
In conservative Utah, naming road for gay leader stands out
Salt Lake City now has a street named after Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians to run for and win public office in US history. In 1977, the social activist was elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. A year later, he was assassinated along with San Francisco Mayor, George Moscone. Although a few Utah residents fought against the proposed toponym, according to Stan Penfold, Utah’s first openly gay councilman, the majority of the community embraced the move to add “Harvey Milk Boulevard” to the state’s rich toponymic history.
The Most Popular Surnames in Each State of the USA
Ancestry.com recently published a map of the most popular surnames in the United States, based on their data. Despite the diversity of culture in the US, a few names dominate, for example, Johnson and Smith.
ANS 2017 Abstract Submissions due Thursday, June 30th
This week is your last chance to submit an abstract for the ANS 2017 Conference in Austin, TX. Abstracts are due on Thursday, June 30th. For additional information, refer to the Call for Papers.
Why do we forget names?
Why do we forget names? Forgetting names is one of our memory’s most common failures – but there are ways to make them stick. Our brains don’t have a simple filing system, with separate folders for each kind of information and a folder labelled “Names”. Rather, our minds are associative. They are built out of patterns of interconnected information. When you meet someone for the first time, you learn their name. For your memory, however, it is probably an arbitrary piece of information unconnected to anything else you know and unconnected to all the other things you later learn about them.
New York renames Manhattan street ‘Muhammad Ali Way’
Earlier this month, New York temporarily renamed 33rd Street to honor the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali. The new street sign was added to below “33rd Street” near Madison Square Garden.
Victories for Transgender Name Changing in South America
In a landmark decision this spring, Brazilian authorities ruled that transgender and transsexual civil servants are allowed to use their newly chosen names at work. Although conservatives have complained about the decision, for now, Brazilian LGBT human rights activists are savoring their victory. This decision was passed just weeks before another historic onomastic ruling in which Bolivian officials also acknowledged the rights of adult transsexuals to legally change their names.
How Transgender People Choose Their New Names
In January 2016, the scholars of the American Name Society selected “Caitlyn Jenner” as the official Name of the Year for 2015. One of the main reasons for this decision was the socio-historical significance that this name had in highlighting the importance of transgenderism across the United States and the around the world. The process of selecting a new name to mark one’s declaration of self is a common and often highly emotional experience for people within the transgender community. In her TIME article, Katy Steinmetz discusses how some prominent transgender people went about this process.
Tackling Naming Questions in Gay or Lesbian Families
One of the interesting questions that new same-sex parents often face is what names their children should use to distinguish between them. In a family with two differently gendered parents, this issue is often fairly straight-forward (e.g. Mom and Dad; Ma and Pa). But in families with two moms or two dads, creativity is often called for. In a great video by Brandy and Susan of The Next Family, the two moms discuss how they dealt with finding names within their own family.