For the past four years, residents of California have been battling one of the most severe droughts in the state’s history. As a result, California is currently witnessing one of the worst fire seasons ever.

From July into August, firefighters found themselves battling a fire system named the “Rocky Fire” which burned almost 70 thousand acres of land. In general, fires are named after the area where they are believed to have started.

Other infamous California fires that have earned official names include:

• the 2012 Rush Fire
• the Cedar Fire of 2003

One of the worst wildfires in California history, the Cedar Fire is also known by two names that express its devastating size: Fire Siege of 2003 and 2003 Firestorm.

In Japan, last year was the “Year of the Horse”. As a result, many of the most popular boys’ names for 2014 included the kanji character for horse, for example,駿, 悠馬 .

Topping the list of most popular kanji characters used for boys’ names in 2014 was 蓮 or “ren” which means “sacred lotus”. Amongst the girls’ names, one of the most commonly appearing characters was 凛, which according to Japan Today means “dignified” and “gallant”.

See this article and this article for more information.

Digg and Atlas Obscura are crowd-sourcing a map of best and worst business pun names… Submit your nominations here! Nominations close September 7th.

Facebook recently deleted the pages of Balizar Orion Avatar and his wife Audry Avatar because their last name is a word Facebook has flagged as being a likely suspicious or fake account. See this article for more on this modern onomastic controversy.

In recent months, the European leaders have been struggling to cope with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who continue to seek refuge within the European Union. According to a recent report released by EUROSTAT, the statistical office of the European Union, “the number of first time asylum applicants increased by 86% in the first quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.”

According to many international human rights organizations, the EU’s policies for dealing with this humanitarian emergency have been dismal. Within Germany, the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been particularly sharply criticized for failing to respond quickly and effectively enough to this crisis.

In the midst of all this criticism, the Chancellor has received an unusual vote of confidence from an unexpected source. As a sign of her gratitude, 26 year old Ophelya Adé, an asylum-seeker from Ghana, named her newborn baby daughter Angela Merkel Adé. When asked by the naming authorities in Hanover why she had chosen that name, Adé replied that she liked Merkel. Whether the new Fraulein Merkel will be allowed to remain in Germany along with the other 750 foreigners who have applied for asylum in Hannover remains to be seen.

Click these links for more information in English and in German.