The American Name Society is pleased to share the ANS Winter 2021 Newsletter. 
ANS Panel at the Modern Language Association Conference (online)We hope to see you there!
The complete program can be found here.
For more information about the MLA, check out the official website.
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his January 3rd column, he looks at the history of the name Maud.
Maud is a medieval form of Matilda, a Germanic name linking words for “power” and “battle.” Brought to England by Norman conquerors, it was best known through Empress Matilda (1102-1167), daughter of King Henry I, whose title came from her first marriage to Holy Roman Emperor Henry V.
When Henry I died in 1135, he wanted his daughter to be Queen. The English weren’t ready to accept a woman monarch, so a civil war between Matilda and her cousin Stephen ensued. This was settled in 1153 by declaring Stephen king, but making Matilda’s son Henry Plantagenet his heir. Though official records called her Matilda, in everyday English she was Empress Maud. Around 1380, “Matilda” was the fourth commonest woman’s name in English records, but was still “Maud” in spoken English.
Tennyson and Whittier made Maud popular, though by 1875 Americans preferred the spelling “Maude.” The first nationwide baby name lists in 1880 showed Maude ranking 21st and Maud 70th. Combined they would have been 13th.
In 2021, we have moved online access to our journal NAMES to its new home at the University of Pittsbugh, as an Open Access journal. This means that online access to every issue of NAMES will be free to everyone! We are excited about sharing our work freely with scholars around the world. The print journal will continue to be published four times a year for those members who wish to receive it.
All back issues are available as PDFs in the archives, for online viewing or to download.
If you’d like to join the ANS, or renew your membership, please click here.
The American Name Society requests nominations for the “Names of the Year for 2020”. The names selected will be ones that best illustrate, through their creation and/or use during the past 12 months, important trends in the culture of the United States and Canada.
Nominations are called for in the five following categories:
Winners will be chosen in each category, and then a final vote will determine the overall Name of the Year for 2020. Anyone may nominate a name. All members of the American Name Society attending the annual meeting will select the winner from among the nominees at the annual ANS meeting on January 24, 2021
Advance nominations must be received before January 21, 2021.
You can submit your nominations via this form: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LVGCQRZ
Alternately, you can download the form and email it to Deborah Walker: debwalk@gmail.com
Nominations will also be taken from the floor at the Annual Meeting.
Thank you for your nominations!
Registration is now open for the 2021 ANS Conference. The ANS conference will take place on the Crowdcast platform from January 22-24, 2021.
You can register online here, or download a PDF of the Conference Registration Form and mail it to ANS Treasurer Saundra Wright, as per the instructions on the form.
The schedule is available here!
For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.
Place and date: New York, 3–7 May 2021
The theme for the second session is Geographical Names Supporting Sustainable Development and Management of the Pandemic. It is aligned to the General Assembly defined theme of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development for 2021, “Sustainable and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development: building an inclusive and effective path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda in the context of the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”.
Governments are requested to email the Secretariat not later than 15 March 2021 the full-length documents (national reports, divisional reports, working group reports and technical papers). The summaries should be submitted before 22 January 2021 in order for them to be translated and issued in the six official languages.
The city of Naples will name the municipal stadium to Diego Armando Maradona. Laura Bismunto, the president of the Toponymy Commission of the City Council of Naples, announced the change of title of the San Paolo Stadium in Naples.
The Neapolitan stadium, initially called Stadio del Sole and renamed with today’s title in 1963, will be the second stadium in the world to bear the name of Maradona. The other is the Diego Armando Maradona in Buenos Aires, where Argentinos Junior plays. Maradona’s death is a mourning that will leave its mark in the Neapolitan community and dedicating the Stadium of Naples to what many have called the greatest footballer of all time is an essential gesture.
We invite you most warmly to join the Canadian Society for the Study of Names, also known as la Société canadienne d’onomastuqie, in their conference meeting on Saturday, May 29, 2021 and Sunday, May 30, 2021. Please note that as the 2020 annual conference was cancelled due to COVID-19, all papers accepted last year will automatically be accepted for our 2021 conference.
At the meeting, members may present papers in formal theme sessions, participate in a toponymic fieldtrip and attend the annual general meeting of the Society. In 2021, the CSSN will meet as part of the Congress of the Humanites and Social Sciences “Northern Relations” to be held at University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada from May 27th to June 4th, 2021.
Please send your paper proposal abstract to arrive by February 1st, 2021 using the following address: jonathan.lofft@mail.utoronto.ca
