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Award for Best Article in Names: A Journal of Onomastics 2015

The 2015 Award Winner is:

Michael Adams, “The Course of a Particular’: Names and Narrative in the Works of Joseph Mitchell” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 63(1): 3-15.

Awardee Biography
Michael Adams is a Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has also served as Editor of American Speech, the publication of the American Dialect Society for ten years. His term ended in November 2015. Most recently, he is co-editor of Studies in the History of the English Language VI: Evidence and Method in Histories of English (De Gruyter Mouton). In addition to being a highly valued, long-time member of the ANS, Professor Adams is also an editorial board member of the Journal of Literary Onomastics, the only scholarly periodical devoted to the study of names in literary texts.

Committee: Michael McGoff, Dr. John Algeo, Kemp Williams.

2016 Emerging Scholar Award Winner

Maryann Parada (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Ethnolinguistic emblems in Latino Chicago: Attitudes of the second generation toward names and naming

lico_photo_maryannThe 2015 Emerging Scholar Award Committee is pleased to announce this year’s winner: Maryann Parada from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The title of her submission is “Ethnolinguistic emblems in Latino Chicago: Attitudes of the second generation toward names and naming.”

 

Abstract:

This study explores the name-language interface in the identity stances and attitudes of Latinos raised in the U.S. It follows Thompson’s (2006) approach in considering the name-identity-language connections for bilinguals, and also responds to Joseph’s (2004) call for work on how individuals perceive and negotiate ethnolinguistic identity through their names. Complementing previous research into the naming decisions of Hispanic immigrant parents, I examine the name-based perspectives of the named themselves. Survey data provided by 54 Latino young adults from the Chicago area are analyzed to investigate the relationship between the ethnic character of the participants’ personal names and their responses on topics such as name suitability and satisfaction, name pronunciation preferences, name changes, and the importance of names as ethnolinguistic identity markers. While clear patterns emerged, the data also highlight the complex, and often contradictive, relationships between self, language, and name.

Biography:

Maryann Parada is a doctoral candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her interests lie in the sociolinguistics of minority Spanish, including issues in the areas of names and identity, language attitudes, family language policy, and heritage language pedagogy. Her recent publication in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education examines the role of birth order in the names of second generation Latinos in Chicago.

 

Attendees of the upcoming ANS annual conference in January will have a chance to hear her present her research in person.

As the ESA award-winner, Maryann will receive a cash award as well as a mentor who will assist her in preparing her research manuscript for possible publication in a future issue of NAMES. Click here for more information about the award.

This year’s ESA Committee was made up of Dr. Mirko Casagranda, Dr. Jan Tent, and Ms. Lisa Radding.

ANS 2016 Conference Dinner Announcement

gallery1This year’s conference dinner will be held in Clyde’s of Gallery Place located at 707 7th Street, NW, Washington, D.C.. Our group reservation is for 7pm on Saturday, January 9, 2016. If you have not already made your reservation for what promises to be a fun-filled evening, please contact our Treasurer, Michael McGoff: mmcgoff[@]binghamton.edu

Laura Ivanov and Sara-Joelle Clark of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will give a keynote speech at the ANS annual meeting in January.

event-1719The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. is one of the world’s premiere institutions for preserving the memory of the Holocaust and reminding current and future generations about the dangers of hatred and intolerance. The USHMM maintains one of the largest international research collections of historical artifacts documenting the crimes committed during the Nazi period.

The American Name Society is pleased to announce that one of the keynote speeches to take place during the annual conference in Washington, D.C. will be given by Laura Ivanov and Sara-Joelle Clark, who work in the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center of the USHMM.

Ivanov and Clark will be giving a talk entitled “Research and Preservation of Names at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum”. During the presentation the experts will discuss the types of name based collections that are available at the museum. The presentation is a must-see for researchers and private citizens interested in learning more about international efforts to uncover and preserve the names of Shoah victims for all posterity.

The keynote is scheduled for Friday, January 8th, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm in Salon 14 of the of the Marriott Marquis.

See additional information on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website.

First Names and Family Names in the Context of the Law on Personal Names and Onomastics, Budapest, Hungary, December 10, 2015

3044867827_6e619a0f80_mOn the 10th of December, 2015, an interdisciplinary workshop entitled “First Names and Family Names in the Context of the Law on Personal Names and Onomastics” will be held in Budapest, Hungary. The workshop is organized by the Department of Civil Law, Faculty of Law, Eötvös Loránd University.

 

Topics to be discussed include:

  • the right to name and the Court of Justice of the European Union
  • children’s right to their names
  • current regulations and trends in first name choices in Hungary
  • legal and linguistic issues involved in name changes in modern-day Hungary
  • valid rules of entering names in Hungarian official registers

 

Talks will be given by academic scholars of Law and Linguistics as well as ministerial executives and public administrators. The language of the workshop is Hungarian and the conference program in available in Hungarian..

At Princeton, Woodrow Wilson, a Heralded Alum, Is Recast as an Intolerant One

2872022732_7b77a4f62c_mWoodrow Wilson is perhaps best known as the 28th President of the United States. However, at Princeton University, the name of the Nobel Peace Prize winning politician from the Southern state of Virginia has begun to take on an additional association: racial discrimination.

The university’s Black Justice League has publicized the history of Wilson’s unwavering private and public support for racial segregation in the United States. According to leaders of the Princeton activists, this legacy of intolerance is not only an affront to minority students and staff, it also calls into question the appropriateness of university institutions continuing to carry the former President’s surname. Critics of the recent calls for on-campus name-changes are quick to remind, however, that the prestige which the university currently enjoys is due in no small measure to Wilson’s past leadership as one of the university’s early presidents.

According to an article appearing recently in the New York Times, the final decision over whether the names of certain campus mainstays such as the renowned “Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs” will undergo an onomastic make-over is in the hands of the University’s Board of Trustees. Although deleting the name Wilson will not right the wrongs done during the Wilsonian period, the discussion may well help current generations to appreciate the importance of protecting the civil rights which so many gave their lives to secure.

Research showing female-named storms seen as less threatening ‘worth considering’

16299823153_065be21e7e_mABS news Australia recently reported that meteorologists down under are re-considering the tradition of bestowing storms male and female names. According to Alan Sharp who manages the tropical cyclone warning services for Australia, questions have been raised in response to American researchers’ findings that storms bearing female names may be taken less seriously than storms carrying male names. Whether or not the decades of results gathered by American investigators working within Gender Studies, Psychology, and Statistics actually apply to Australia has not yet been demonstrated.

Based on work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this assertion is to be taken quite seriously. As reported in an article from the Washington Post, some research indicates that simply “changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley […] to Eloise[…] could nearly triple its death toll.” These findings are important for risk management.