Following the sixth meeting of the Emergency Committee regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the World Health Organization announced  on January 14, 2021 that it is developing a standardized nomenclature for COVID-19 variants “that does not reference a geographical location.” In a letter to Science magazine, Salim S. Abdool Karim, Tulio de Oliveira, and Glaudina Loots suggested an alternative naming convention is necessary, as the practice of applying geographical qualifiers is generally inaccurate and often harmful to the ethnic people from the region.

The authors write, “The connotation that the variants were created and spread by their respective first locations has already generated political backlash through travel bans and negative perceptions of these countries and their people. The risk of being associated with a new variant also disincentivizes country-level genomic surveillance and transparent reporting of their results.” The new naming guidelines are expected to be released soon, but the authors of the letter believe scientific and media outlets should not delay in avoiding reference to the country or region of first description when identifying variants.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro will speak about his book, Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through its Place-Names, at a book talk sponsored by the NYU Institute for Public Knowledge on Thursday, May 13, 2021 at 6:30 pm. The announcement for the event reads:

“Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that has gained iconic meaning worldwide. He meets the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, and lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints. As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now.”

Register for the event via the NY Institute for Public Knowledge website.(Advanced registration and RSVP are required.)

An artist’s rendering of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (Public Domain)

After a heated debate, the City of Chicago is one signature away from re-naming Lake Shore Drive after Hatian Explorer and Founder of Chicago Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, John Byrne reports in the Chicago Tribune. Many landmarks throughout the city have been renamed in recent memory, some of which honor the memory and deeds of important Chicagoans where others merely reflect a change in ownership. Byrne writes:

“There’s recent precedent for naming a prominent street to honor an important Black Chicagoan. In 2019, the City Council renamed a stretch of Congress Parkway downtown for crusading African American journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells.
Still, Chicagoans cling to tradition, a point that’s been proven time and again. How many locals still refer to the city’s tallest building as the Sears Tower, though it has officially been the Willis Tower since 2009?”

Read more about Point du Sable, Lake Shore Drive, and the politics of renaming in the Chicago Tribune.

Though the indigenous peoples of the American colonies were pushed off of their land throughout the history of the United States, indigenous names proliferate throughout the North American continent. In his New Yorker essay “How New York was Named”, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro discusses the indigenous toponyms of America’s cities, states, and landmarks. Dialects of Lenape, Algonquian, and many other North American languages (which at one point made up a quarter of the world’s languages) are featured throughout the essay, as are the modern language centers founded to preserve the culture and language of the people behind these names.

Jelly-Schapiro is also the author of Names of New York: Discovering the City’s Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names (Pantheon, 2021), from which the essay is adapted.

Additionally, the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University will be hosting Jelly-Schapiro for a book talk at 6:30 pm on Thursday, May 13, 2021. Click here for more information on that talk.

Grogu, with a misspelled name tag, at a coffeeshop in Boston shortly after the episode aired (Photo: Brandon Simonson, 2020)

At the 2019 Name of the Year competition, held during the 2020 annual meeting of the American Name Society in New Orleans, the name “Baby Yoda” won in the “Artistic and Literary Name” category. In his report of the competition, Cleve Evans writes,

Baby Yoda is the popular designation for a character in the Disney Plus Star Wars series “The Mandalorian.” In the film, this recurring character with saucer eyes and bat-like ears is known simply as The Child. However, viewers and critics quickly dubbed him Baby Yoda. The character is almost always called this alternative name on social media. It’s unusual for the common name of a fictional character that was created by fans to replace the official name originally given by writers or producers.

Season 2 of the popular series, which aired on Disney Plus in the Fall of 2020, has revealed The Child‘s real name: Grogu.

The big reveal follows the introduction of another Star Wars fan favorite, Ahsoka Tano, a former Jedi Padawan well-known from the animated Star Wars series, who reveals The Child‘s name to the titular character and audience alike. While the name Grogu was recognized and duly nominated for the American Name Society’s 2020 Name of the Year in the “Artistic and Literary Name” category, popular Canadian television series Schitt’s Creek won the vote. Read more about Grogu and The Mandalorian in the episode recap from The New York Times, and may the force be with you. Always.

Kovalevskaya crater, named for Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya (Public domain image of the crater from NASA)

While drawing moon craters, artist Bettina Forget made a startling discovery: only 32 out of 1,578 moon craters have been named for women. Read more about Bettina’s work and the “Women with Impact” project in this recent profile in the New York Times.

It all started with a short message, sent to everyone named “Josh Swain” via Facebook Messenger in the Spring of 2020:

“Precisely, 4/24/2021, 12:00 PM, meet at these coordinates, (40.8223286, -96.7982002) we fight, whoever wins gets to keep the name, everyone else has to change their name, you have a year to prepare, good luck”

Eventually, all those with the name “Josh” were invited to the faux battle, which itself was moved from private Nebraskan farmland to a nearby public location. What followed can only be described as something out of the battle royale genre: armed with foam pool noodles, people united only by their common name battled until only one Josh was left standing. Read more about the battle of the Joshes in the Wall Street Journal.

A modern story of immigration, assimilation, and the challenges that those with Asian personal names encounter through both, Beth Nguyen retells the account of her family arriving in America from Vietnam in the 1980s and the difficulties she encountered surrounding the general public’s perception of her first name. Those unfamiliar with the pronunciation of Beth’s birth name (Bich, pronounced “Bic”) might perceive it as homophonous with an English curse word, and her peers, teachers, and others often did. Beth speaks about the decision to change her name and the impact that personal names have on individuals in America, especially refugees.

Beth’s first book, published under her birth name Bich Minh Nguyen, is Stealing Buddha’s Dinner: A Memoir (Penguin, 2008).