The American Name Society is pleased to share the ANS Fall 2023 Newsletter.
ANS Name of the Year Discussion and VoteREGISTRATION is now open! Click here to register for the discussion and vote.
Join us for our annual Name of the Year discussion! We will be nominating, discussing, and voting on eligible names in the following categories:
The discussion will be conducted by Laurel Sutton, ANS President and Name of the Year Coordinator.
If you have not done so already, you can nominate names via this form
Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2023, at midnight Pacific.
Tickets to this event are free!
The URL to our Zoom room will be sent to everyone who registers for this event.
Please review previous Name of the Year reports, to better understand the type of names that will be accepted:
Name of the Year Report 2022 (PDF)
Name of the Year Report 2021 (PDF)
***
Our first conference of the year will take place February 17, 2024, over Zoom. It will be a one day event. Registration information can be found here.
The latest issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics is now available online! Click here to read the latest in onomastics scholarship in volume 71, number 4 of Names. A table of contents for this special issue on Ukrainian Names and Naming appears below.
Names is published as an open access journal available to all via the Journal’s home at the University of Pittsburgh. All journal content, including the content found in previous volumes, is available for free online as downloadable PDF files.
Articles
Romanian-Ukrainian Anthroponymic Contact on the Interstate Border along the Tisza River by Oliviu Felecan and Adelina Emilia Mihali
Homeland on Foreign Maps: Toponymy of Western Ukraine on Austrian, Interwar-Polish, and Soviet Topographic Maps with Special Focus on Toponymy of the Carpathian Mountains by Wojciech Włoskowicz
A Case Study of De-Russification of Ukrainian Hodonyms: Rigged Trial or Justice Restored? by Oleksiy Gnatiuk and Anatoliy Melnychuk
Вільні Люди ‘Free People’ and Надійний тил ‘Reliable Rear’: Names of Ukrainian Resistance and Support by Olena Kadochnikova
Ukrainian Onomastic Identity Across 15 Years (2006–2021) by Olena Karpenko and Valeriia Neklesova
Book Reviews
Empty Signs, Historical Imaginaries: The Entangles Nationalization of Names and Naming in a Late Habsburg Borderland by I.M. Nick
Naming and Othering in Africa: Imagining Supremacy and Inferiority through Language by Michel Nguessan
The first ANS 2024 Annual 
Conference will be held online, using Zoom, Saturday February 17, 2024. This one-day event will feature presentations from 16 scholars, as well as updates on the ANS and a report on the Name of the Year Discussion.
The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to attend! Each attendee must fill out this form and pay separately.
Detailed information for attendees, along with the book of abstracts, will be sent in January.
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 will be available as soon as possible.
For more information about the ANS Conference, please visit our Conference Page.
NASA Commander Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission (Photo: Public Domain)
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his December 17th column, he discusses the name “Eileen”.
Eileen’s creating thrills and chills on screen.
“Eileen,” a dark thriller based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s prize-winning 2015 novel, debuted Dec. 8. Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) escapes from an alcoholic father by becoming involved in a revenge killing with colleague Rebecca.
Eileen and Aileen are English spellings of Eibhlín, Irish version of Norman French Aveline, brought to Ireland by 12th century Anglo-Norman invaders. Aveline’s from ancient Germanic Avi (perhaps “desired”) with affectionate suffixes -el and -in. In England it became Evelyn.
By the 17th century Ireland’s Norman aristocracy adopted Irish culture, and as Catholics were persecuted by the British. Aristocratic Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (Eileen O’Connell) (1743-1800) married Captain Art Ó Laoghaire in 1767. In 1773, a Protestant magistrate had Art murdered for refusing to sell him a horse.
Eileen wrote a lament considered one of the greatest Irish poems. In it she tells her husband “Travel that narrow road east where the bushes shall bend before you.”
Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Eileen”!
ANS Name of the Year Discussion and VoteREGISTRATION is now open! Click here to register for the discussion and vote.
Join us for our annual Name of the Year discussion! We will be nominating, discussing, and voting on eligible names in the following categories:
The discussion will be conducted by Laurel Sutton, ANS President and Name of the Year Coordinator.
If you have not done so already, you can nominate names via this form
Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2023, at midnight Pacific.
Tickets to this event are free!
The URL to our Zoom room will be sent to everyone who registers for this event.
Please review previous Name of the Year reports, to better understand the type of names that will be accepted:
Name of the Year Report 2022 (PDF)
Name of the Year Report 2021 (PDF)
***
Our first conference of the year will take place February 17, 2024, over Zoom. It will be a one day event. Registration information can be found here.
The American Name Society requests nominations for the 2023 “Names of the Year” (NoY) vote. Nominations should demonstrate significant linguistic features through their formation, productivity, and/or application, irrespective of associations with the name-bearer. It’s not just your favorite name! Nominations should also reflect important trends in US society during the past year. It is not necessary for a nominated name to have originated in the US.
Nominations are called for the following categories:
The same name can be nominated for more than one category. Each nomination must be supported with an explanation. The NoY Committee reserves the right to reclassify nominations and to reject nominations that do not meet the requirements. Nominations will be evaluated on their linguistic innovation, potential to influence US language use, and ability to capture national attention. The popularity or notoriety of the name-bearer is not prioritized in the evaluation process.
During the NoY special session, the NoY Coordinator will present all of the accepted nominations by category. Attending members discuss the nominations and the NoY may accept additional nominations from the floor. Once the nominations for a category are finalized, the attending members vote to determine a winner for each category. The category winners will automatically be put up for a vote for overall Name of the Year. In addition, the NoY Coordinator may accept nominations from the floor.
Although anyone may nominate a name in advance. However, only ANS members who attend the NoY discussion may vote during the special session. This year’s NoY session will take place at 12:00 pm [Noon] Pacific on January 4th 2024, held via Zoom. To make your nominations, complete the online form found here:
https://nick662.typeform.com/to/qiS2bXas
Advance nominations must be received no later than December 31st, 2023, at midnight Pacific.
“”The Favorite” – Grandfather and Grandson” by Georgios Iakovidis (Image: Public Domain)
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, author Beth DeCarbo explores the grandparent naming trend popular amongst Baby Boomers: alternatives to “Grandma” and “Grandpa”. Due to a myriad of reasons, many grandparents are choosing alternatives to traditional English grandparent names, such as the Swedish “Mormor” (mother’s mother) and “Morfar” (mother’s father).
ANS President Laurel Sutton was interviewed in the article, as DeCarbo writes:
“Some names are just easier for little kids to pronounce,” says Laurel Sutton, a linguist and president of the American Name Society, a nonprofit devoted to onomastics, the study and history of names and naming practices. Distinctive names are also helpful when children have multiple grandmothers and/or live in a multigenerational household, Sutton adds. Besides, “many people like to have pet names, coming up with something a little more personal,” Sutton says. “Identity is becoming a far more open, flexible thing.”
Read more on this naming trend over at The Wall Street Journal.
Call for Papers, Special Issue: “Towards a neurodiverse sociocultural linguistics”We are interested in papers from a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, including linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, socially-oriented discourse analysis, crip linguistics and related perspectives, among others. Possible topics include:
If you are interested in submitting a paper to the special issue, please email an abstract of up to 500 words by January 8th to the editors. Full drafts of selected papers will be due in May of 2024. Please feel free to write the editors with any inquiries: Ayden Parish (ayden.parish@colorado.edu) and Kira Hall (kira.hall@colorado.edu).
Mary Todd Lincoln, former First Lady of the United States of America (Photo: public domain)
Dr. Cleveland Evans writes about names for the Omaha World-Herald. In his December 3rd column, he discusses the name “Mary”.
Today is my younger sister Mary Elizabeth Evans Elliott’s birthday. I won’t get into trouble telling how old she is, but it’s a milestone ending in “0”.
Mary’s the English form of Latin Maria, derived from Hebrew Miriam, name of Moses’s sister in the Old Testament. No one really knows Miriam’s meaning. Because Mara means “bitter” in Hebrew, “bitter sea” used to be a common guess. Today “longed-for child” (ma-râma) is thought a more likely Hebrew meaning. However, since most experts now think Moses was an Egyptian name, many believe Miriam’s from Egyptian mry, “beloved.”
Mary is revered by Christians as the name of Jesus’s mother. Six other Marys are mentioned in the New Testament, including Mary Magdalene and Mary, sister of the resurrected Lazarus.
Mary was rare in medieval Britain. Most thought it too sacred to give a daughter. The first known example was Mary, daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland and his English wife Margaret, born in 1082.
In 1380 Mary ranked 49th in England. It only became common after the Reformation. Though one might think Mary I (r.1553-1558), called “Bloody Mary” for her persecution of Protestants, along with Puritan disdain for what they saw as Roman Catholic “idolatry” of the Virgin Mary, would make the name unpopular, all those New Testament Marys prevailed. Mary, second to Elizabeth after 1600, reached No. 1 during the 1650s, when radical Puritan Oliver Cromwell ruled.
In the 19th century Mary’s popularity was overwhelming. The 1850 United States census found 1,352,362 Marys — 13.5% of all girls and women, nearly one out of seven. In Britain in 1851, it was 16.6%, or one out of six. It’s hard to imagine what life was like when multiple Marys of all ages lived on every street in town.
In 1880, when Social Security’s yearly data starts, 7.24% of newborn girls were named Mary. Though the percentage steadily decreased, Mary stayed No. 1 until 1947, when Linda displaced it. In 2022, Mary only ranked 136th, its lowest in 700 years.
It’s surprising Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) was the only sitting President’s wife named Mary. Two others were acting first ladies — Mary McElroy (1841-1917) for widowed brother Chester Arthur (1881-1885), and Mary Harrison McKee (1858-1930) for father Benjamin Harrison after mother Caroline’s death in October 1892.
“Mary is a Grand Old Name” was written by George M. Cohan for musical “Forty-five Minutes to Broadway,” which debuted Jan. 1, 1906.
Want to learn more? Read on to learn more about the name “Mary”!
