American Name Society
53rd Annual
Ehrensperger
Report
2007
This document marks the 53rd year since the
introduction of this annual review of scholarship in onomastic studies to the
membership of the American
Name Society by Edward C. Ehrensperger. As usual, it is a partial view of the research
and other activity going on in the world of onomastics. In a report of this kind, the editor must
make use of what comes in, often resulting in unevenness. Some of the entries are very short; some
extensive, especially from those who are reporting not just for themselves but
also for the activity of a group of people.
In all cases, I have assumed the prerogative of an editor and have
abridged, clarified, and changed the voice of many of the submissions.
I have encouraged the submission of reports by email
or electronically, since it is much more efficient to edit text already typed
than to type the text myself. There is
some danger, however, in depending on electronic copy: sometimes diacritical
marks or other formatting matters may not have come through correctly. For those not using email, I strongly
encourage sending me written copy.
Again this year, you will notice an important change
in the format of the report. Because
this report is to be posted on the World-Wide Web, I have not included
addresses and telephone numbers as part of the entry. Current members of ANS who would like to
correspond with one or more of the respondents should make a request to me at mmcgoff@binghamton.edu or at the
address you will find below.
In keeping with the spirit of the original Ehrensperger
Report, I have reported on research and publications under a person’s name. In the individual entries, I have listed the surnames
of contributors entirely in capitals.
When you see a name or topic in capital letters and underlined in the
body of an entry you should expect to find a main entry for it in its proper
alphabetical order.
For the web version that can be found at http://wtsn.binghamton.edu/ANS/, I have made
use of hypertext. Many of the entries in
underlined capital letters are also hyperlinks.
On the website version, simply clicking on them will bring you to a
reference in the text. Most people’s
names are hyperlinks as well. In the
main entry for a person if the name as heading is highlighted and underlined,
putting your cursor on it will produce that person’s email address. Clicking on it will produce an email
addressed to them. In the cross
references, clicking on a person’s name will bring you to his or her main
entry. In some cases, clicking on a
hyperlink will launch your browser and bring you to the website of that
organization, much as what happened if you clicked on the American Name Society
hyperlink above. I hope that by again
using hypertext in this year’s web version of The Ehrensperger
Report, I have made it easier and more efficient to use. If you have any comments or suggestions I
would very much like to hear them.
Other Resources
§
Dr. Frank Nuessel is the incoming editor of the
official journal of the American Name Society, Names: a Journal of
Onomastics.
§
Michael McGoff
maintains the ANS Electronic Discussion Group called ANS-L. If you wish to take part in the interesting
discussions that often start up on this listserve, send an email message to the
following address: mailto:listserv@listserv.binghamton.edu. No “Subject” is necessary, and the
message must contain only one line:
sub ans-l yourfirstname yourlastname
§
The system will add your name and email address to
the list and you will receive all notices that are posted. You will also be able to send notices (You
must join the list to do this).
§
Dr. McGoff also maintains the home pages for the American Name Society (ANS) and Who Was Who in North American Name Study of ANS.
The Ehrensperger Report
Michael F. McGoff, Vice Provost
Office of the Provost
Binghamton University
State University of New York
Binghamton, New York 13902-6000
© American Name Society 2006.
Frank ABATE reports that he will deliver a paper entitled: “Cincinnati
Names and Naming: From Settlement to Today” at the annual meeting of the American
Name Society in Chicago, January 2008. He will cover the placenames in
the Cincinnati region and how they reflect settlement history, “starting with
names reflective of Native American heritage, through early white pioneers
(from 1788), then blacks, and finally the huge influx of immigrants to the city
and the surrounding tri-state area (Northern Kentucky and Southeastern Indiana)
from Germany.” He states that: “the
legacy of all these influences can be seen in the names and in the character of
the region.”
Mr.
Abate served this year as a consultant on a legal case involving a surname and
employment discrimination. His other
work includes general-language and specialized dictionary projects. He
notes that “while largely lexical, dictionary projects almost always involve
some onomastic aspects.”
Ernest L. ABEL, a Professor at the C.S.
Mott Center for Human Growth & Development of Wayne State University,
published:
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Nicknames Increase Longevity.” OMEGA: The Journal of Death and Dying,
53:243-248, 2006.
§
Abel EL, Kruger,
ML. “Symbolic Significance of Initials on Longevity.” Perceptual and
Motor Skills, 104:179-182, 2007.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “The Healthy Worker Effect in Professional Football.” Research
in Sports Medicine, 14:240-243, 2006.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “The Healthy Worker Effect in Major League Baseball Revisited.” Research in Sports Medicine, 14:83-87,
2006.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Stereotypic Gender Naming Practices for American and Australian Dogs
and Cats.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics. 55(1):53-64, 2007.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Gender-related Naming Practices: Similarities and Differences between
People and their Dogs.” Sex Roles, (in press).
§
Abel EL. “Birds
are not More Human than Dogs: Evidence from Naming.” Names: A Journal
of Onomastics, (Submitted).
Dr. Abel’s other research interests are related to factors
affecting longevity. A bibliography of his
work not related to names:
§
Abel EL, Hendrix,
SO, McNeeley, SG, O’Leary ES, Mossavar-Rahmani Y, Johnson, SR, Kruger, M. “Use
of Electric Blankets and Association with Prevalence of Endometrial cancer, European
Journal on Cancer Prevention, (in
press).
§
Abel, EL,
Hendrix, SO, McNeeley SG, Johnson, KC, Rosenberg CA, Mossavar-Rahmani Y,
Vitolins M, Kruger, M. “Daily Coffee Consumption and Prevalence of Non-melanoma
Skin Cancer in Caucasian Women.” European Journal on Cancer
Prevention, (in press).
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Heaping in Anniversary Reaction Studies: A Cautionary Note.” OMEGA:
The Journal of Death and Dying, 54(1):59-65, 2007.
§
Abel EL. “Football
Increases the Risk for ‘Lou Gehrig’s Disease,’ Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
(ALS).” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104:1251-1254, 2007.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Mortality Salience in the Major Leagues.” Death Studies, (in press).
§
Abel EL, Kruger,
ML. “Seasonality of Birth in the Majors, 1880-1999.” Social
Biology, 52(1-2):47-55, 2005, (appearing in 2007).
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Age Heterogamy and Longevity: Evidence from Jewish and Christian
Cemeteries.” Social Biology, (in press).
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Lefties are Still a Little Shorter.” Perceptual and Motor Skills,
104:405-406, 2007.
§
Abel EL, Kruger
ML. “Precocity Predicts Shorter Life for Major League Baseball Players:
Confirmation of McCann’s precocity-longevity hypothesis.” Death Studies,
(in press).
Another of Professor Abel’s interests is mythology. On this subject, he published a book in 2006,
Encyclopedia of Intoxication in Myth.
McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, Jefferson, NC, 2006.
Derek H. ALDERMAN responded with thanks to
the American Name Society for the society’s co-sponsorship of his International
Placename Workshop held at East Carolina University in October 2007. Sponsorship by ANS was made possible through
contributions to the Kelsie B. Harder
Memorial Fund which is used in support of education and scholarship in the
field of onomastics. Professor Alderman
provided the following report:
Naming
Places, Placing Names: An International Workshop
By
Derek H. Alderman,
Department of Geography, East Carolina University
Reuben Rose-Redwood,
Department of Geography, Texas A & M University
Maoz Azaryahu, Department
of Geography, Haifa University
The study of placenaming has undergone a
significant reappraisal and renaissance as of late, resulting in the emergence
of a critical literature that explores the social context and ideological
dimensions of geographical naming. Scholars in the social sciences and humanities
are increasingly interested in examining the ways in which placenames are
linked to specific discourses of national, local, and racial/ethnic identity,
to the commodification or selling of place, to the cultural formation and
administrative shaping of space and the politics of collective memory through
the construction of commemorative landscapes.
Responding to this ‘critical turn’ in the field of toponymy, Derek
Alderman (East Carolina University),
Reuben Rose-Redwood (Texas A&M University), and Maoz Azaryahu (Haifa
University) recently organized an international workshop dedicated to the
state-of-the-art study of placenames, street-names, and related practices of
spatial inscription. One of the chief
aims of the workshop was to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars
who work in a variety of geographical settings and historical contexts, while
also critically assessing the different theoretical traditions that have
inspired contemporary placename scholarship and identifying areas for future innovation and collaboration.
The workshop, titled Naming Places, Placing Names, was hosted by the Department of
Geography at East Carolina University, October 13-16, 2007. Workshop activities took place at the
university as well as at the conference facilities of a local hotel in
Greenville, North Carolina. Terri Moreau
and E. Arnold Modlin, Jr., two graduate students at East Carolina University,
provided valuable logistical support to conference organizers. Funding for participants’ hotel
accommodations, meals, in-town transportation, and registration materials was
provided by several workshop sponsors—including the American Name Society, the U.S.
Placename Research Center at the University of Alabama, the Department of
Geography at Texas A&M University, and East Carolina University’s
Department of Geography, Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences, and
Division of Research and Graduate Studies.
Roger PAYNE, Executive Secretary Emeritus of the U.S. Board on Geographic
Names (USGS), delivered the workshop’s keynote address. Roger discussed the naming activities of the
U.S. federal government, the importance of standardization in placenaming, and
the GNIS (Geographic Names Information System), which he has worked to develop
over the past several years. Other
special workshop guests were Paul Carter, author of the influential book The Road to Botany Bay: an Essay in Spatial
History, and Linda Watson, a nationally recognized figure in geographic
names information research.
Seventeen experts from across the United States as
well as from Australia, Finland, Israel, Slovenia, and Canada presented papers
at the workshop. The workshop brought
together established and distinguished scholars as well as young researchers
just beginning their academic careers.
Participants represented the fields of geography, linguistics, history,
sociology, art, planning, and political science. Presented papers included theoretical
contributions and place-specific case studies as well as a consideration of
applied toponymy, methodological issues, and data sources. Participants presented the following papers
at the workshop:
§
“Virtual Place Naming,
Internet Domains, and the Politics of Misdirection: The Case of www.martinlutherking.org.”
by Derek H. Alderman, East Carolina University.
§
“Odonymic Confusion, Odonymic Reform: A
Semiotic Analysis and Two Berlin Case Studies” by Maoz Azaryahu, Haifa
University.
§
“The Ontological Politics of Not-Naming” by Lawrence Berg, University of British Columbia.
§
“Poetic
Geographies: Community Renewal in Northern Victoria, Australia” by Paul Carter,
University of Melbourne.
§
“‘It’s just a
sign:’ Honorary Naming as a Mobilization Strategy” by Deidre Ferron, University of Chicago.
§
“Congressional
Earmarks, Political Stature, and Place Names” by Joshua Hagen, Marshall
University.
§
“A
Trans-continental Street-naming Project: The United Daughters of the
Confederacy and the Jefferson Davis Highway, 1913-1944” by Euan Hague, DePaul
University, Chicago.
§
“Misnomer and
Manifest Destiny: Indian Place Names in America” by R.D.K Herman, National
Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC.
§
“Space and People: Politics of Street Naming”
by Emilia
Palonen, University of Jyväskylä/Collegium
Helsinki.
§
“Applied
Toponymy” by Roger Payne, U.S. Board of Geographic Names.
§
“The Naming of
Gaming in Nevada” by Pauliina Raento, University of Helsinki.
§
“Sixth Avenue is
Now a Memory”: Street Numbering, Spatial Inscription, and the Limits of the
Official City-Text” by Reuben Rose-Redwood, Texas A&M University.
§
“Place Names in
Slovenia: A Contact or Separation between Political Power and Local Identity”
by Mimi Urbanc and Matej Gabrovec, Geographical Institute
of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
§
“Toponymic
Bibliometrics: An Overview for United States Geographic Names” by
Linda Watson, Placename Research Center, University of Alabama.
At the conclusion of the workshop, participants agreed
that it would be worthwhile to continue the interdisciplinary and international
dialogue started at East Carolina University.
There was discussion of holding another placename workshop in the
future, perhaps outside the United States.
The workshop format should remain small and rigorous in nature, while
not ruling out the possibility of larger meetings. Participants were also interested in pursuing
publication opportunities, such as the organization of special journal issues
and edited books that focus on the cultural and political dynamics of placenaming. Participants
also agreed that there was a need to develop an electronic discussion network
that would provide a forum to disseminate
research findings, teaching innovations, examples of community/public engagement,
news of conferences, calls for papers, and general intellectual
discussion. As a result of discussions
that took place at the Naming Places,
Placing Names workshop, Reuben Rose-Redwood and Derek Alderman have
organized a special panel session on “New
Perspectives on Critical Place-Name Studies” at the Annual Meeting
of the Association of American Geographers in Boston, Massachusetts, April
15-19, 2008.
Ibrahim AKSU of Canakkale Onsekiz
Mart University reports that he has been preoccupied with other projects this
year but continues to compile material on Turkish surnames for future
publication. Meanwhile, he says, “onomastics
(adbilim) activity in Turkey
continues at a quiet pace with an average of 2-3 papers published each year by
dedicated individuals, usually faculty members in departments of Turkish
Language and Literature.” Some studies
to emerge recently are as follows (in Turkish unless otherwise stated):
§
Dr.
Mustafa Senel from Kafkas University in Kars, together with Dr. Nadir Ilhan
from Elazig University, presented a paper on the connection between animals and
personal names (Hayvanlarinin Kisi
Adlarina Yansimasi: Adbilim Acisindan Bu Yansimanin Turk Kulturundeki Yeri)
for an international symposium on Hunting
in Turkish Culture at Marmara University in Istanbul on 15-16 November
2006.
§
A
well-researched study of town and village names on the Gallipoli Peninsula
based on written and oral sources (Yazili
ve Sozlu Kaynaklardan Hareketle Gelibolu Yarimadasi Koy Adlari Uzerine Bir
Inceleme) was published by Dr. Aktan Muge Ercan (now at Kirikkale
University) in the Autumn 2002 issue of Haci
Bektas Veli Research Journal, Gazi University, Ankara. The paper (available
online) concludes that most Turkish village names come from geographical
features and surroundings, while others stretch back into antiquity and have
been reshaped over the years.
§
Dr. Ali Acikel at Tokat Gaziosmanpasa
University has two studies to his credit, both about the district of Artukabad
(Artova) in the province of Tokat, based on archival records. One is “Turkish Personal Names in the District Of Artukabad
1455-1520” (Artukabad Kazasinda Turk Kisi Adlari), published in the Journal of Social Sciences of Firat University in Elazig (2003). The second is “Place Names in the District of
Artukabad 1455-1600” (Artukabad Kazasi Yer Adlari),
in the Faculty of Literature Journal of
Hacettepe University in Ankara
(2003). The latter examines a total of 200 settlement names
in Artukabad in terms of word pattern and origin.
§
A “more
questioning study” is that of Dr. Serafettin Zeyrek at Onsekiz Mart University
in Canakkale concerning government policies to change village names during the
Republican era (1923 onwards) (Turkiye’de
Koy Adlari Degistirme Politikasi), published in the Faculty of Education Journal of Cukurova University in 2006. The article relates how widespread
name-changing took place throughout the 1930s, usually but not always to “Turkicize”
old names, and, supported by legislative measures, continued from 1940 until
the 1970s, with a confirmed total of 36% out of 35,917 villages across the
country having adopted a new name by 1978. The author stresses that although the changes
were generally welcomed by the villagers, frequent re-naming (some villages
changed more than once) caused problems for local authorities dealing with
official documents and sometimes villagers resisted the change and later
reverted to the old familiar name.
§
Professor Dr.
Klaus Kreiser, chair of Turkish Language, History, and Culture at the
University of Bamberg in Germany and involved in Ottoman era research for many
years in the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute, has a
long-term interest in Turkish surnames and is currently preparing a “handbook”
on this subject, based on research among Turks in Germany.
§
Mary Neuburger, Assistant
Professor, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, published “The
Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern
Bulgaria.” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2004) which includes a chapter on
names, mostly name-changes of Turks in Bulgaria.
§
Professor Shamsiddin
S. Kamoliddin, Leading Researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of
Sciences in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, published in 2006 what is claimed to be the
first book in Russian on ancient Turkic place-names in Central Asia: Drevnetyurkskaya
toponimiya Sredney Azii, (Ancient Turkic Place-names of Central Asia),
Sharq Publishing House, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 192 pp. The book is based on early medieval Turkic
and Sogdian sources (VII-VIII c. AD), as well as medieval Arabic, Persian and
Turkic sources of IX-early XIII c. AD, showing that Turkic placenames formed a
great part of the placenames of that period and that “in the early medieval
period the Turks formed a great part of the local population of Central Asia
and settled along the whole of its territory from the Yetti-suw region to
Khurasan.”
Professor Aksu also reports that some “recent trends may also be noted:” (1) An increase in
the number of academic studies devoted to tracing the succession of settlement
names through Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman times up to the present,
which will especially benefit archaeologists trying to identify ancient sites.
(2) The resurgence of a periodic trend to persuade commercial enterprises by
means of campaigns or regulations to remove “foreign” (usually French or
English) names in favor of Turkish ones. Impetus for the latest campaign comes from an
initiative by Prof. Sukru Haluk Akalin, head of the
influential Turkish Language Board (TDK) since 2001 and faculty member at
Hacettepe University in Ankara, who has a long string of papers on aspects of
Turkish culture to his name. Following a
noticeable increase in the use of non-Turkish names by businesses, shopping
centers, housing estates, hotels and shops, even city districts, Prof. Akalin
spearheaded a TDK campaign in 2006 to award “plaques of honor” to companies and
business premises that changed their name to Turkish. This trend actually commenced in some towns and
cities in the late 1990s, reinforced by municipality by-laws obligating the use
of Turkish names. Thus, the Formula-1
track in Istanbul which was going to be called “Otodrom,” then “Istanbul Speed
Park,” is now, modestly, “Istanbul Park,” while the “Istanbul Gosteri ve Kongre Merkezi” entertainment
complex had previously been slated to
open as “Myshowland.”
(3) A surprising new development is the occasional use of surnames in daily speech when referring to colleagues in
large organizations, presumably to avoid errors of identification. Normally in Turkey, surnames are left
unmentioned in favor of honorifics or job-related appellations; using a
person’s surname is considered cold, even impolite. On official documents, however, surnames are
always used, and in capital letters (like the
Ehrensperger Report). (4) Also
regarding surnames, and most likely in response to the adoption of EC
standards, a slight loosening-up has been detected in the insistence on Turkish
surnames when applying for ID cards (following births or marriages), whereas
previously, foreign names would most likely have been rejected by the civil
registration office.
John ALGEO is
preparing the sixth edition
of Origins and Development of the English
Language and the accompanying Problems.
He plans to “add something more to them
on the history of English names, both surnames and given names.” He is also working on a review of Willy van
Langendonck's Theory and Typology of
Proper Names for the LSA journal, Language.
Dr. Algeo also reports that he is “a Harry Potter fan,” so he “has
been doing some talks and articles on those books, mainly as archetypal
stories.” He does, however, “work in
some literary onomastics, such as why Tom Riddle is appropriately named; why Voldemort means “flight from death,” and
why the “Deathly Hallows” are rightly so called.
María BARROS writes that she has not produced
any onomastic material this year but, perhaps, next year she will be able to
devote more time.
Herbert BARRY III, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, presented a paper
“Fictional Namesakes of Author, Father, & Mother in the Novels of Charles
Dickens” on 5 January 2007 at the annual meeting of the American Name Society,
in Anaheim, California. Part of the
information has subsequently been published as an article “Characters Named
Charles or Charley in Novels by Charles Dickens” in Psychological Reports (2007) vol. 101, pp. 497-500. Dr. Barry reviewed for Names: A Journal of Onomastics, (2007, vol. 55, pp.173-175) “the
excellent book The Great Big Book of Baby
Names: A Complete Guide from A to Z by Cleveland Kent
EVANS (2006: Publications International, Lincolnwood, Illinois).” In addition, Dr. Barry has also contributed an
article for a forthcoming volume of the international publication Onoma, “Family Members as Sources of
First Names in Jane Austen's Novels.” He
has recently been reading novels by Charlotte Bronte and Ernest Hemingway for future
reports on choices of first names by famous novelists.
A
chapter by Professor Barry and Aylene S. Harper, “The Majority of Female First Names Ended in A or E
Throughout the Twentieth Century” (2005), may be found in the book, Gender Roles edited by Janice W. Lee,
and published by Nova Biomedical Books (pp. 117-143). The same publisher has reprinted this chapter
as pages 91-116 in a book Gender
Identity, Psychology and Lifestyle (2006) edited by Alan J. Lauber. Dr. Barry and Dr. Harper are currently analyzing
attributes of popular names given to African American and white males and
females in Pennsylvania in 1990, 1995, and 2000. “The most conspicuous finding is that
diversity of names increased during the span of ten years and was greatest for
African American females, least for white males.”
C. Richard BEAM is “still collecting Pennsylvania German placenames,” He directs The
Center for Pennsylvania German Studies.
Susan J.
BEHRENS, an Associate Professor of Communications Sciences
and Disorders at Marymount Manhattan College, produced:
§
Behrens, S.J. and Sarowitz, T. “A
Linguistic Examination of Forms of Address on the television series Star Trek.” Names: a
Journal of Onomastics. (Submitted).
§
Behrens, S.J. June 2007. “Apex Hides the Hurt:” Book Review. Names: a Journal of Onomastics, 55 (2),
175-178.
§
Behrens, S. and Mercer, C. “The Role of the Universal Translator on Star Trek.” Popular Culture Association,” 2008, San
Francisco. (Abstract Submitted.)
Professor Behrens
also presented:
§
Behrens, S. and Sarowitz, T. “Naming
Practices on Star Trek.” Popular
Culture Association National Conference, Boston, 2007.
§
Behrens, S. “Linguistic Analysis of Forms of Address in the Television
Series Star Trek.” 46th Annual Names
Institute, Baruch College, 2007.
Thomas L. BERNARD, Emeritus Professor of Education and Psychology, responds that he taught a Spring Semester
course (2007) at Springfield College (Mass.) entitled, “Onomastics: The
Origins, Meanings and Significance of Family Names.” He also published an article entitled “Where
Welsh Once Dwelled” in the North American Welsh Newspaper, NINNAU (July 2007).
Dr. Bernhard’s recently published book, The Twelve Days of Christmas: the Mystery and the Meaning “has
resulted in considerable interest and requests for speaking engagements. The hypothesis is that it was an
esoteric placename code for Jerusalem-bound pilgrims.”
Jim BERNHARD replies that the University of Missouri Press is publishing his book,
Porcupine, Picayune, & Post: How
Newspapers get their Names. It is an
account of the history and etymology of English-language newspaper
names, and “the reasons -- historical, political, philosophical,
personal, or sometimes merely whimsical -- that they were adopted.” The
book includes about 250 names, from familiar titles such as
Times, Dispatch, Gazette, Herald, Journal, and Post, to
peculiar ones like Acantha, Bazoo, Bee, Bunyip, Hot
Blast, Jimplecute, Porcupine, Picayune, Solid Muldoon, Unterrified
Democrat and Zephyr. More
information is available at the University of Missouri Press website: http://press.umsystem.edu/fall2007/bernhard.htm
Ana
BOULLÓN, a member of the
Facultade de Filoloxia of Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, writes that
she produced: “Antroponimia e
territorio: sobre a difusión dos apelidos en Galicia”, en R. Álvarez, F.
Dubert, X. Sousa (eds.): Lingua e territorio. Santiago de Compostela:
ILG. Consello da Cultura Galega, 2006,
235-255. ISBN 84-96530-20-5. It is available on the web:
http://www.consellodacultura.org/mediateca/publicacions/lingua_territorio.htm
Furthermore
she responds that “we are working on a web page that shows the territorial
distribution of surnames in Galicia (North West of Spain), in percentage and in
number.” Data are provided from the
Instituto NacNacional de Estadística (Madrid), corresponding to the population
of Galicia in 2002. The project was designed
at the Instituto da Lingua Galega (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) and
the Real Academia Galega. The address is: http://servergis.cesga.es/website/apelidos/viewer.asp.
Bruce
L. BROWN, Professor
of Psychology at Brigham Young University, presented the following papers
related to names during the period:
§
Jenkins, M.,
Roney, T., Scott, J. H., Koenen, L., Kehl, B., Wuehler, J., Irvine, S.,
Lonsdale, D. W., Spackman, M. P., and Brown,
B. L. (March, 2007). “A
Cross-cultural Comparison of Four Generations of American, Brazilian, French,
and German Male and Female First Names Categorized According to Gender, Decade
of Birth and Geo-location of Birth.” Paper
presented at the Sixth Annual Workshop on
Technology for Family History and Genealogical Research, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah.
§
Scott, J. H.,
Wuehler, J., Larsen, C., and Brown, B.
L. (January 2007). “American Given Name Markers of Decade of Birth,
Geo-location, and Gender: A Comparison over the Past Century and a Half.” Paper
presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Name Society, Anaheim, California.
§
Koenen, L.,
Jenkins, M., Decker, J., Irvine, S., and Brown,
B. L. (January 2007). “Decade of Birth,
Geo-location, and Gender: A Cross Cultural Comparison of Accuracy of Identification
for French, German, and Brazilian Given Names since 1835.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the
American Name Society, Anaheim, California.
§
Brown, B. L.,
Lonsdale, D. W., Spackman, M. P., Farahnakian, M., Farahnakian, M., and
Gardner, D. (January 2007). “Segmental Phonemes Compared to Acoustical
Supra-segmental Properties as Mediators of Dialectal Differences in the
Pronunciation of Farsi Names.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the
American Name Society, Anaheim, California.
Ronald
R. BUTTERS responds that, “as of September 1, 2007,” he retired after
40 years on the faculty as Professor of English and Cultural Anthropology and
Chair of the Linguistic Program at Duke University. He reports, during this period, his editorial
experience was:
1996 - 2007, General Editor, American Dialect Society Publications
and Editor of Publication of the American Dialect Society (PADS, the monograph series);
1999 - , Editorial Advisory Board member, New Oxford American Dictionary;
2007 - , Co-editor, The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.
He also serves as Vice President,
International Association of Forensic Linguists, 2007–9.
His publications for the period are:
§
“Sociolinguistic
Variation and the Law,” chapter 12 in Sociolinguistic
Variation: Theories, Methods and Applications, ed. by Robert Bayley and
Ceil Lucas (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007);
§
“Changing
Linguistic Issues in U.S. Trademark Litigation,” in Proceedings of the Second European IAFFL Conference on Forensic
Linguistics/Language and the Law, ed. by M. Teresa Turell, Jordi Cicres,
and Maria Spassova (Barcelona: Publicacions de l'IULA, No. 19; expected in
2007), 29–42;
§
“Trademarks,”
Chapter 16 in Dimensions of Forensic
Linguistics, ed. by John Gibbons
and M. Teresa Turell (Benjamins, expected 2008);
§
“Evidence
in American Trademark Disputes,” Evaluating
the Evidence: Studies in Language and the Law, ed. by Krzysztof Kredens and
Stanislaw Gozdz-Roszkowski. Cambridge Scholars Press (expected 2008);
§
“A
Linguistic Look at Trademark Dilution,” to appear in Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal (vol. 24,
2008);
§
Review
of Edward Finegan and John R. Rickford, eds. Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge
University Press, 2005; to appear in Language
(2007);
§
Review
of Roger W. Shuy, Linguistics in the
Courtroom: A Practical Guide. Oxford University Press, 2006. To appear in Language in Society (2007).
In addition, Dr. Butters
presented:
§
“Forensic
Linguistics and American Trademark Law,” Department of Linguistics, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC, April 10, 2007. [Invited 90-minute lecture]; and
§
“A
Linguistic Look at Trademark Dilution.” Conference on Trademark Dilution:
Theoretical and Empirical Inquiries, High Tech Law Institute, Santa Clara
University School of Law, Santa Clara, California, October 5, 2007. [Invited
presenter].
Edward
CALLARY remained active in onomastics
in 2007. He wrote the Onomastics section
for The Year’s Work in English Studies,
published annually by Oxford University Press, and guest edited the December
(special) issue of Names: a Festschrift
in Honor of Edwin D. Lawson.
Professor Callary’s book, Surnames,
Nicknames, Placenames and Epithets in America, a collection of essays from Names: a Journal of Onomastics, was
published in December, 2006 by the Edwin Mellen Press, and his Place Names of Illinois will be
published in 2008 by the University of Illinois Press.
Mike
CAMPBELL continued work on his website
(http://behindthename.com), “adding
about 850 new names to the site.” He also
“added native Devanagari spellings
for the Indian names on the site, and kanji/Chinese character spellings for the
Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names.” He
“had invaluable assistance with the Japanese names from Claudia Segger.”
Clive CHEESMAN is Rouge Dragon Pursuivant at the College of
Arms in London. He
published, “Names and Naming systems,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Ancient
Greece and Rome, edited by E. Bispham, T. Harrison and B. Sparkes
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 465-470. He also continues to work on his book Personal Names
and Naming in the Roman World for the publisher Duckworth. It is to be published in 2008/2009. At the moment he is “specifically working on
slave names (including certain cross-cultural aspects of slave naming, or
rather the assumptions that historians of different periods have made about
slave naming).”
Shawn CLANKIE is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at
the Otaru University of Commerce in Otaru, Japan. Within onomastics, most
of his work continues to be on brand names, although he has “recently become
involved in the naming of several new residential developments and businesses
in the Niseko ski resort area of Hokkaido.” Dr. Clankie recently participated in a
Japanese government white paper on the branding potential of Niseko and the
Niseko region. Outside of the study of
names, most of his work now involves the writing of textbooks and self-study
materials for English language learners. In 2007, he published several books:
§
Talking About My Life. (with T. Kobayashi) Tokyo: Goken.
§
Expressing What You See, Hear, Smell, Taste,
Touch, Think and Want in English. (with
T. Kobayashi) Tokyo: Sanshusha.
§
Speaking English in a Snap. (with T. Kobayashi) Tokyo: Goken
§
Our Sacred Health and Environment. (with T.Kobayashi) Tokyo: Seibido
§
Grammar Rules of Spoken English. (with T.Kobayashi) Seoul: System Books.
§
Eye on America: Japanese and American Views of
American Culture. (with T. Kobayashi)
Tokyo: Sanshusha.
Dr. Clankie’s website may be found
at: http://www.otaru-uc.ac.jp/~shawn
Richard
COATES has “moved from the
University of Sussex to the University of the West of England, Bristol” where
he is Professor of Linguistics and Onomastics.
His interests continue to center on placenames in the British Isles,
especially England, and on name theory. He is Director of the Survey of English
Place-Names and general editor of the publications of the English Place-Name
Society. He also continues to be
Secretary of ICOS.
During
the period he attended the 14th
Conference on Nordic Onomastics, Borgarnes, Iceland, 11-14 August 2007 where
he offered some observations on the Scandinavian toponymy of Lincolnshire.
Publications for this period
include:
§
“Names.” In Richard M. Hogg and David Denison, eds, A History
of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 312-51.
§
“Stour and Blyth as English River-names.” English
Language and Linguistics 10.1, 23-9.
§
“Properhood.” Language 82.2, 356-82.
§
“Latin and Irish Place-names in England and Wales.” In Eva
Brylla and Mats Wahlberg, with Lars-Erik Edlund, eds, Proceedings of the 21st
International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Uppsala, August 19-24 2002,
vol 2. Uppsala: SOFI, 63-74.
§
“Maiden Castle, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Hārūn
al-Rašīd.” Nomina 29, 5-60.
§
“Ludgate.” Nomina 29, 129-32.
§
“A New
Early Source of Basque: the Willughby Glossary of 1664.” (With †R.L. Trask) Transactions of the
Philological Society 104.3, 331-93.
§
“The Pre-English Name of Dorchester-on-Thames. Studia
Celtica 40, 51-62.
§
“Lichfield and Lytchett: a Philological Problem Involving Brittonic */e: /
Resolved.” Studia Celtica 40,
173-4.
§
“A Brittonic Solution
of the Second Element in Presteigne and Kinsham. Cambrian
Medieval Celtic Studies 52, 49-64.
§
“Afon Ystwyth and Onomastic Sound-change.” In Joseba
A. Lakarra and José Ignacio Hualde, eds,
Studies in Basque and historical
linguistics in memory of R.L. Trask. Special number of Anuario
del Seminario de Filología Vasca „Julio de Urquijo” 40.1/2,
265-71. [R.L Trasken oroitzapenetan ikerketak euskalaritzaz eta
hizkuntzalaritza historikoaz. Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca „Julio de Urquijo" 40.1/2.]
§
“Chesterblade,
Somerset, with a reflection on the element chester.” Journal of the
English Place-Name Society 38, 5-12.
§
“Some
Observations on Blore, Staffordshire.” Journal
of the English Place-Name Society 38, 13-16.
§
“Behind the Dictionary-forms of Scandinavian Elements in England.” Journal of the English Place-Name Society
38, 43-61.
§
“Report of the Honorary Director, Survey of English
Place-Names (2005-6).” Journal of the English Place-Name Society
38, 100-1.
§
“Foreword” [as Chair of the Editorial Board], Onoma
39 (2004).
§
“Timeline Maps.” Journal of the English Place-Name
Society 38, 92. (Review).
§
“Names
in Shakespeare” (with Seongsook Choi) online
(http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/schoi/Shakespeare/search.php).
§
The place-names of Hayling Island, Hampshire. Web-publication:
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/llas/staff_coates_r_hayling.doc. 96pp.
§
“Two Bristolian Hill-names and what can be done with Place-name Evidence:
Penpole Point and Spaniorum Hill.” The
Regional Historian 18
(Winter), 26-9.
§
“The Name
Bedwyn.” Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 100,
198-9.
§
“Goldhwite: an Unrecognized Middle English Bird-name?” Transactions
of the Philological Society 105.2,
188-91.
§
“Invisible Britons: the View from Linguistics.” In
N.J. Higham, ed., Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (Publications of
the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 7), 172-91.
§
“Yell.”
Journal of Scottish Name Studies 1, 1-12.
§
“Bordastubble,
a Standing-stone in Unst, Shetland, and Some Implications for English Toponymy.”
Journal of Scottish Name Studies 1, 137-9.
§
“The Genealogy of
eagre ‘tidal surge in the river Trent’.” English Language and
Linguistics 11.3, 507-23.
§
“Microdialectological Investigations in the English South-east.” Locus
focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2, 62-80.
§
“N7.1.1,
the Paradox of Pett.” Locus
focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2,
27.
§
“N7.1.2,
Some Medieval Minor Names in Herstmonceux.” (with Lana Dabboussy) Locus
focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2,
27-8.
§
“N7.1.9,
Crangon Cottages, East Dean, East
Sussex.” Locus focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2, 31.
§
“In search of Caldeburgh.” (With Christopher Whittick
and Mark Gardiner) Locus focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2, 43-6.
§
“Ash-ealer,
Sometimes ash-yealer, as an Occupational
Term.” (with Christopher Whittick) Locus
focus: forum of the Sussex Place-Names Net 7.1/2,
102-3.
§
“Azure
Mouse, Bloater Hill, Goose Puddings, and One Land called the Cow: Continuity
and Conundrums in Lincolnshire Minor Names. Working paper LxWP 21/07, Dept of English, University of Sussex. Web
publication: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/linguistics/documents/lxwp_21-07_azure_mouse.pdf.
51 pp.
In addition, Professor
Coates reviewed:
§
Word origins ... and How We Know Them. By Anatoly
Liberman, Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press (2005). Modern Language
Review 102.3, 832-3.
§
The Syntax of Old Norse. By Jan Terje Faarlund, Oxford, etc.:
Oxford University Press (2004). Journal
of Pragmatics 39.11, 2093-4.
Gerald L. COHEN, a
Professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, continues his widely respected work with the
publication Comments on Etymology. He reports the following works in that
publication for the period:
§
Gerald Cohen
(presenting information compiled by Pinkfreud-ga -- Internet moniker on Google-answers
website): “Tina ‘Crystal Meth’ and Related Matters.” Oct.-Nov. 2006, pp. 20-25.
§
Gerald Cohen
(presenting information from John Bradbury and Marc Picard): “Nagogami ‘Sandy
Lake’ in Algonquian” Oct.-Nov. 2006, pp. 25-26.
§
Barry Popik and
Gerald Cohen: “‘The Big Easy’ As a Nickname for New Orleans is Recent;
Pre-1960's Attestations Of ‘The Big Easy’ Exist, But Their Original Meaning Is
Unclear.” Oct.-Nov. 2006, pp. 30-33.
§
Barry Popik:
“‘Show-Me’ Attestations from 1894.” Oct.-Nov. 2006, pp. 43-45.
§
Gerald
Cohen: “‘Pooty-Poo’ As George W. Bush's
Nickname for Vladimir Putin.” Oct.-Nov. 2006, p. 46.
§
Gerald Cohen
(compiler): “‘Spud’ as a Nickname -- Information from Jonathan Lighter and Lynn
Murphy.” Oct.-Nov. 2006, p. 47.
§
Fred Shapiro: “Pre-1876
Evidence for Chicago's Nickname ‘The Windy City’.” Dec. '06 - Jan. '07, pp.
30-31.
§
Barry Popik: “‘Show-me’
Expression: Recently Spotted 1894 Attestations Point to Omaha, Nebraska as
Playing a Key Role in its Origin.” Feb.-March 2007, pp. 2-4.
§
Bill Mullins:
“Antedating ‘Yegg’ by Two Years (1903 to 1901) and a Compilation of Yegg
Parlance Based on 1901 and 1904 Material.” Feb.-March 2007, pp. 11-17.
§
Gerald Cohen
(compiler): “Origin of Gang-Name ‘Crips’ -- Clarification from Wilson Gray.” Feb.-March 2007, pp. 20-21.
§
Barry Popik and
Gerald Cohen: “‘The Big Apple' Revisited; Towards a Compilation, #1.”
Feb.-March 2007, pp. 22-53. #2:
April-May 2007, pp. 13-33.
§
Gerald Cohen:
“Origin of NYC’s Nickname ‘The Big Apple’: Latest Research On This Topic.”
Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Dictionary Society of North
America, June 14, 2007. Chicago.
Rella Israly COHN writes to say that the project that she “has been occupied with
for over 30 years is finally going to appear as a book!” Entitled Yiddish
Given Names: A Lexicon, it will be published by Scarecrow Press. She says that it actually began with a paper
for her Master’s degree in 1973, “Patterns and Correlations in Hebrew and
English Names: A Preliminary Study.”
Aaron DEMSKY, the Director of The Project for the
Study of Jewish Names at Bar-Ilan University in Israel writes that, “This past year has seen significant developments in establishing
Jewish onomastics as an academic discipline.”
He reports that the 8th International Conference on
Jewish Onomastics was held on June 21, 2007 at Bar-Ilan University
Ramat –Gan, Israel. It was organized in
his honor by colleagues and friends.
Twenty-eight lectures delivered in Hebrew or English reflecting research
on given names, surnames, and toponyms from the biblical through the modern
periods from the historic, linguistic, sociological and literary approaches. Those interested in the booklet of abstracts may
receive it from Professor Demsky either as an attachment or in hard copy. Contact him at demskya@mail.biu.ac.il.
The
conference program included:
§
Anat Gueta – “The World View of Rabbi Menahem Azariah
Emanuel ben Isaac Berechiah da Fano (הרמ"ע) as Reflected in the Names he gave his Children.”
§
Tzvia Koren-Loeb –
“The Frankfurt-am-Main Memorbuch of
Names, 18th Century.”
§
Yitzchak Kerem – “Italian-Jewish Names of Greek Jewry.”
§
David Cassuto – “Possible Origin of the Name Cassuto.”
§
David Golinkin – “Why is Rabban Gamliel called Baal Hahotem.”
§
Meir Bar-Ilan – “People who are named after their Places.”
§
Chaim Ben David –
“The Toponymy of Eretz Israel – A
Regional Analysis.”
§
Avi Sasson – “Phonetic Site Identification by Nineteenth
Century Rabbis: Schwartz and Goldhar.”
§
Abraham Ofir
Shemesh – “Names of New Agricultural
Crops in Rabbinic Literature of 16-20th Centuries.”
§
Aharon Gaimani – “Names of Yemenite Jews From the Ledger of the
Rabbinic Emissary R. Shlomo Nadaf.”
§
Menashe Anzi – “Family Nicknames in Sanaa: Consolidation,
Distinction and Tension in the Community in the Twentieth Century.”
§
Yossef Charvit – “Rabbi Maurice Eisenbeth (1928-1958) as
Researcher of the Jewish Name in North Africa.”
§
Victor Hayoun – “First and Last Names in the Jewish community
of Nabeul in Tunisia.”
§
Gila Hadar – “Bienvenida (Welcome) and Azebuena (Making
Good): Patterns of Girls’ Given Names in the Sephardic Diaspora.”
§
Ziva Feldman – “From Yoseph to Yossi and Yoske as Signs of
the Times and of Ideology.”
§
Michal Rom – “’We are four girls at home, the name
seems to get lost:’ Israeli Women’s Choice of a Family Name Upon Marriage
and Its Implications on the Effort to Preserve Jewish Names.”
§
Orna Baziz – “Names in Work of David Shahar.”
§
Zehava Kor – “Smiling at my Hungarian Names.”
§
Tsuguya (Tsvi)
Sasaki - "What Are the ‘International’ Forms of Biblical Hebrew Personal Names
Supposed to Be? Ways of Adopting and Adapting Them in the International Planned
Language Esperanto.”
§
Manuel John
Kaamugisha Muranga – "Theophoric
Biblical Names and Their Impact on the Personal Naming System of Selected East
African Peoples.”
§
Chaim Cohen – "Biblical Hebrew Personal Names and the Moshe
Held Method for Comparative Semitic Philology.”
§
Michael Avioz – “’The shameful thing has devoured all for which our
ancestors had laboured’ (Jer. 3:14): On the Names Mephibosheth and Ishbosheth.”
§
Itzhaq Shai – “Understanding the Migration of the
Philistines: City Names and Their Implications.”
§
Talia
Ditchi-Barak – “The Epithets of the God
of Israel in Biblical Hebrew.”
§
Moshe Garsiel – “Puns on Names as a Literary Device in the
Book of Judges.”
§
Amnon Shapira – “Names in the Bible – between ‘Allegory’ and
‘Allegoristic’.”
§
Yair Zakovitch – “Making a Name Meaningful: Between Literary
and Textual Criticism.”
Professor
Demsky also participated in the international conference: Topographic Aspects of Jewish Family Names among Sephardic Jewry, The
Bar-Ilan Conference: In the Footsteps of the Marranos and Jewish Exiles,
held in Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain, January 29-February 5, 2007.
The
Steering committee of ICOS 23 (Toronto, August, 2008) has asked Professor
Demsky to organize a section on Jewish onomastics. In answer to the Call for Papers, he has received
twenty proposals that are now being reviewed.
He
continues to give popular lectures on Jewish names as an aspect of Jewish
heritage and family genealogy in elementary and high schools as well as to
adult education study groups.
Dr.
Demsky’s recent research projects and publications include:
§
The result of his
ongoing research into biblical names and ancient Hebrew inscriptions
(epigraphy) is the publication of his paper on the so-called MPQD (Census)
inscription dating from the 7th century BCE in the Bulletin of the Association of the Society
of Oriental Research (BASOR), 345 (2007), pp 1-6.
§
Another popular
article “Jewish Women’s Names: A Historical Perspective” will appear shortly in
JOFA Journal.
§
Under the
project’s sponsorship, Dr. Yigal Levin is preparing a monograph on Biblical Genealogies. Both publications have been financed by a
donor.
§
In addition, Dr.
Demsky is editing a new series in English focusing on specific communal themes
of Jewish onomastics. The first volume
is a collection of eleven studies on Jewish
Names in the Sephardi Diaspora (1492-the Present). This series will be published by the
University of Maryland Press.
During
this past academic year, Professor Demsky presented a BA seminar on “Jewish
Onomastics in Antiquity” in the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan
University. There were fifteen students
among whom were several graduate students wanting to enhance their own
respective research. Also during this
period, he received his first doctoral student in Jewish onomastics. The student will be researching Surnames among Rumanian Jewry.
Lastly,
Dr. Demsky reports that, Dr. Tsuguya (Tsvi) Sasaki of the Department of Hebrew
and Semitic languages at Bar-Ilan University offered a course on onomastics
from a linguistic point of view. Please
consult his website for more information: http://www.ts-cyberia.net. “It is noteworthy that two courses on
onomastics were given at the same university from two academic perspectives.”
Christine
DE VINNE, Professor and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Ursuline
College, published “Papal Self-Naming:
Genesis of a Tradition” in Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 41-58. She also reports that she and Dorothy
Dodge-Robbins “enjoyed collaborative guest-editing of the September 2007 issue
of Names: A Journal of Onomastics on the theme of women’s onomastics.”
She adds that they would like to “thank their submitters for the abundance of
topical manuscripts that made final selections very difficult.” Dr. DeVinne looks forward to presenting
“Renaming and Gender-unmarking: U. S. Women’s Colleges in Transition” at the
January 2008 ANS conference in Chicago.
She continues to serve as book review editor of Names:
A Journal of Onomastics and she
invites authors and publishers to contact her to secure reviews of recently
published work. Name Scholars interested in reviewing for the journal are
welcome to contact Professor DeVinne “with information about which area(s) of
specialization they would like to cover.” See also, Dorothy D.
ROBBINS.
Wendi DUNLAP writes to say that she is “currently in the Humanities MA program (History
concentration) at California State University/Dominguez Hills.” She is “fascinated by the formation of
surnames in the Middle English period, and is interested in researching names
in the Wakefield Manor Court Rolls from the West Riding of Yorkshire.” Currently she is categorizing all of the
surnames in the 1274-5 and 1350-52 Wakefield Rolls, and comparing the types of
names that appeared in each period.
Sheila EMBLETON, Vice President,
Academic at York University in Toronto, reports that her work in onomastics for
the period included:
§
Member
– of Editorial Board – Onomastica Canadiana.
§
Correspondent
– International correspondent for Canada, Rivista Italiana di Onomastica.
§
Member
of the Honorary Committee of the RIOn
[Rivista Italiana di Onomastica] International Series/Quaderni Internazionali di RIOn.
§
Chair
of organizing committee – 23rd International Congress of Onomastic
Sciences, York University, Toronto, August 17 – August 22, 2008.
§
Vice-President,
International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS), 2005-2008.
§
Referee
– ANS Annual Meeting Anaheim 2007, Chicago 2008.
In
addition, Dr. Embleton, an incredibly productive scholar, was active in
non-onomastic activities:
§
“Data Capture and Presentation in the
Romanian Online Dialect Atlas.” in Papers
from the Methods in Dialectology XII Conference, Université de Moncton,
2007, (to appear in Linguistica Atlantica
Volume l 27-28). Conference proceedings
article – (with Dorin Uritescu and Eric Wheeler).
§
“Romanian Online Dialect Atlas: Data
Capture and Presentation”, in Viribus
Quantitatis: Festschrift for Gabriel
Altmann, ed. Peter Grzybek and Reinhard Köhler, Berlin/New York: de
Gruyter, 2006, pages 87-96. Book chapter – (with Dorin Uritescu and Eric
Wheeler).
§
Native
American Place Names of the United States by William
Bright, Language (to appear). Book
review.
§
Contributions
to the Science of Text and Language: Word Length Studies and Related Issues, Peter
Grzybek (ed.), Word (to appear). Book
review.
§
Language
Classification by Numbers, by April McMahon and Robert McMahon, Language (to appear). Book review.
§
“Defining User Access to the Romanian
Online Dialect Atlas,” Dialectologia e
Geolinguistica, Volume 16, 2008 (to appear). Notice of Research Project –
(with Dorin Uritescu and Eric Wheeler).
§
“York University Welcomes Indian Students,”
India Abroad Supplement on Education,
page 10, June 2007. Newspaper article.
§
“Defining User Access to the Romanian
Online Dialect Atlas,” Fifth Congress of Dialectology and Geolinguistics,
Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal, September 4 – 8, 2006. Conference presentation – (with Dorin Uritescu
& Eric Wheeler).
§
“Introduction: Workshop on Quantitative
Approaches to Comparative Linguistics,” International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Montreal, August 6, 2007. Conference presentation (and day-long
workshop organized with Joe Salmons).
§
“Digitalized Dialect Studies:
North-Western Romanian,” Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania, June 28, 2007. Invited
presentation – (with Dorin Uritescu and Eric Wheeler).
§
“Destination India”, “Canada – India: A
synergy in education,” Canada-India Business Council, Brampton, Ontario, July
19, 2007. Panel presenter.
§
“Enhancing Student Experience through Cross-Border
Initiatives: Panel on “Experiences in Cross-Border Education,” 3rd
International Transatlantic Degree Programs Workshop (organized by Deutscher
Akademischer Austausch Dienst/German Academic Exchange Service and Freie
Universität Berlin), Toronto, September 29, 2007. Panel presenter.
§
“Accommodation of Students with
Disabilities,” National Vice-Presidents Academic Conference (NATVAC),
University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, October 11-12, 2006. Panel organizer – (with Barbara Roberts).
§
Member-of-executive
– International Linguistic Association.
§
President – International Quantitative
Linguistics Association.
§
Member
– Board of Directors, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute; member of 40th
anniversary committee.
§
Member
– Executive, SWAAC [Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada] to 2007.
§
Member
of organizing committee – SWAAC [Senior Women Academic Administrators of
Canada] Annual Conference, Toronto, May 2007.
§
Chair
– Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents, 2004-2008.
§
Chair
– National Association of Vice-Presidents Academic, 2007-2008.
§
Member – Abstract Selection Committee,
Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS) Annual Meeting,
Eastern Kentucky University, 2007.
§
Member – Program Committee, Association
for Computational Linguistics Workshop on Computational Research in Historical
Phonology, Prague, June 28-29, 2007.
§
President
– Canadian Friends of Finland Education Foundation
§
Representative – from the Canadian Society
for the Study of Names to Women’s Issues Network, Humanities and Social
Sciences Federation of Canada.
§
Review
editor – and member of Editorial Board – Word.
§
Review
editor – and member of the Editorial Board – Journal of Finnish Studies.
§
Associate
editor – Diachronica.
§
Associate
editor – Journal of Quantitative Linguistics.
§
Member
– of Editorial Board – Musikometrika.
§
Member
– of Editorial Board – Quantitative Linguistics, book series.
§
Member
– of Advisory Editorial Board – Amsterdam Classics in Linguistics, book
series.
§
Member
– of Advisory Editorial Board – Current Issues in Linguistic Theory,
book series.
§
Referee
– Journal of Quantitative Linguistics.
§
Member of Editorial Advisory Board,
Edinburgh Historical Linguistics monograph series.
§
Referee/Assessor – merit or promotion
cases (2 universities); (Austria) Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen
Forschung; (France) Agence Nationale de
la Recherche; proposed MA in Linguistics (University of Western Ontario).
Cleveland Kent EVANS, is immediate past President
of the American Name Society, For
those interested, he passes on the URL of the Social Security website: (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html)
Gillian FELLOWS-JENSEN, writes
that her publications for the period are:
§
Runes and their Secrets: Studies in Runology, edited by Marie
Stoklund, Michael Lerche Nielsen, Bente Holmberg & Gillian Fellows-Jensen,
Copenhagen, 2006, 461 pp.
§
“Nordic and English in East Anglia in the Viking
period”, Nowele 50/51, 2007, 93-108.
§
“The Scandinavian Element gata Outside the
Urbanised Settlements of the Danelaw”, West over Sea. Studies in
Scandinavian sea-borne expansion and settlement before 1300, edited by
Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams, Leiden-Boston, 2007,
445-459.
Dr. Fellows-Jensen also
responds that, “together with Peter Springborg,” she is busy “editing the
proceedings of the tenth seminar of Care and Conservations of Manuscripts
that was held in October 2006.” The book
will appear in April 2008.
She has been invited to
deliver the Toller Memorial Lecture at the University of Manchester on 3rd
March 2008. She plans to talk about
“Danes and the Danish Language in England: an Anthroponymic Point of View”.
Wayne
H. FINKE, Deputy Chair of
Modern Languages and Comparative Literature and Professor of Spanish at Baruch
College, City University of New York, continues to organize the annual Names
Institute which occurs on the first Saturday of May each year. The 46th
Names Institute was held this past on May 5, 2007. Professor Finke and Baruch also hosted the
American Society of Geolinguistics in September 2007. The conference focused on “The Geolinguistics
of Minority Languages.” Professor Finke
is editor of the journal Geolinguistics.
Douglas
GALBI is a
Senior Economist with the Federal Communications Commission. His website is available at http://www.galbithink.org/.
Thomas J. GASQUE, Professor
Emeritus of English, University of South Dakota, continues as secretary of the
American Name Society. His review of
Edward Callary’s Surnames, Nicknames, and Epithets in America appeared
in the March issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics, and a review of Home
Ground, edited by Barry Lopez, will appear in the March 2008 issue. He has also written a
biographical/bibliographical introduction to the Festschrift for Edwin Lawson, which will appear as the December
2007 issue of Names. Although he
has retired to South Carolina, he continuing to work on his dictionary of South
Dakota placenames, and he spent a month in that state this summer moving toward
the completion of this long-term project.
Cynthia
L. HALLEN, a Professor in the Department
of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young
University reports:
§
“Fabrics of Faith
in Emily Dickinson’s Proper Names.” Emily Dickinson International Society
Conference in Kyoto, Japan. August 3-5. August 3, 2007.
§
“Emily
Dickinson’s Place Names.” (With Nielson, Malina M.); Names: A Journal
of Onomastics. 54:1 (March 2006) 5-21.
§
“The ‘Malachi’
Given Name Pattern in a Swedish Village, 1500-1800.” Names: A Journal
of Onomastics. 55:4 (December
2007) 397-406.
Stephen P. HALUTIAK-HALLICK writes that he
has “nothing to report” for this period.
Aylene S.
HARPER. See BARRY
Denis
HUSCHKA, accepted a
new and “very demanding” position during this period, so he was not able to
devote time to his interest in name studies but he promises to “continue soon”
in his onomastic work.
Derek M. JONES has been studying the identifiers (names)
that occur in the source code of software.
Bob JULYAN continues to chair the New Mexico Geographic Names
Committee, and in that role he represented the state at the COGNA conference in
Lexington, Kentucky. In addition, this
year he became involved in the USGS stewardship program for GNIS. In that capacity, he has hired a contractor
to do editing and maintenance of the GNIS database for New Mexico. Mr. Julyan’s also continues to write about
geographic names. He published an
article in the Explorers Journal, the
magazine of the Explorers Club, about names created by explorers; the article
appeared late in 2006.
Helen KERFOOT, continues
as an Emeritus Scientist at Natural
Resources Canada in Ottawa. She has “undertaken
activities as: Chair of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical
Names (UNGEGN); as Past President of the Canadian Society for the Study of
Names (CSSN); and as Chair of the Ontario Geographic Names Board (OGNB).
Ms.
Kerfoot has been involved in toponymic and associated activities in various
areas:
UNGEGN:
§
Chaired the 24th
Session of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)
in New York in August 2007;
§
Elected as
President of the Ninth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of
Geographical Names, New York, August 2007;
§
Participated in
meetings of UNGEGN working groups: Evaluation and Implementation in Honolulu,
January 2007; Toponymic Data Files and Gazetteers (as well as a EuroGeoNames
meeting) in Madrid in March 2007; Exonyms in Prague, May 2007;
§
Participated in
the UNGEGN divisional meeting for the Arabic Division in Tunis in April 2007
and the East Central and South-East Europe Division in Prague in May 2007;
§
Helped with the
instruction at UNGEGN training courses in applied toponymy in Maputo
(Mozambique) in September 2006 and in Tunis in April 2007;
§
Completed the
coordination of contributors’ materials and liaison with production staff at
the United Nations for:
-
Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical
Names (including Romanization
systems, toponymic data text encoding standards, and country names in the
languages and scripts of the country) published in 2007, and;
-
The brochure Geographical Names as Vital Keys for Accessing
Information in our Globalized and Digital World. (Can be downloaded from the UNGEGN
website: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo
).
§
Efforts over the
coming years will particularly be directed at working with countries of Africa
to develop authorities for the national standardization of geographical
names. Technical sessions on
geographical names are being organized at the 31st International
Geographical Congress in Tunis, 12-15 August 2008.
Website:
§
Prepared material
for the update of the UNGEGN website (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo)
§
The Report of the
Ninth Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, UNGEGN documents
and activities are detailed on the UNGEGN website
§
Presentation at
the CSSN 2006 meeting: UNGEGN – current
issues and available materials;
§
The CSSN website
is available in English (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/info/cssn_e.php)
and in French (http://toponymes.rncan.gc.ca/info/cssn_f.php);
§
The 2008 CSSN annual meeting will be held in
conjunction with the International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS) being
held at York University, Toronto, 17-23 August 2008. Contact: Sheila EMBLETON
(embleton@yorku.ca). Website: www.yorku.ca/vpaweb/ICOS2008/
§
Future meetings will be held in Ottawa – 2009,
Montreal – 2010, New Brunswick – 2111.
Ontario Geographic Names Board (OGNB):
§
The Board, under the auspices of the Ontario Ministry
of Natural Resources (based in Peterborough, Ontario), has met four times
during the past year, primarily to address names submitted to the Board for
decision. The Secretariat of the OGNB
can be contacted through Jeff Ball (jeff.ball@mnr.gov.on.ca).
Lastly, Ms. Kerfoot says, she continues “to be particularly interested in the United Nations
training courses in toponymy for developing countries, and the toponymy of
Northern Canada, as well as that of Tristan da Cunha and other small islands of
the world.
William J.
KIRWIN of Memorial
University of Newfoundland edited : Regional
Language Studies: Newfoundland 19 (Memorial University of Newfoundland,
2006). Professor Kirwin offers that “a
copy will be sent to any interested person who requests one.” The contents of the book includes: W. Gordon
Handcock, “Exploring the Toponym Saltons in
Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland;” Bryan A. Greene, “Toponymy from the Mina Benson
Hubbard Expedition to Labrador, 1905;” William J. Kirwin, “Standardization of
Spelling in the Editing of the Dictionary
of Newfoundland English
[1982;1990];” Becky Childs, “First Year on the Rock: A Sociolinguist reflects
on Language and Life in Newfoundland;” William J. Kirwin, “Regional Language in
Undersea Names [Screech, Scruncheon, Touten and Dipper Seamounts];” “Corrections,
Acquisitions, Recent Publications.”
Dr.
Kirwin further reports that “topics investigated during the year include:
toponymy with the word Devil; the
regional word tickle in placenames;
and detailed collection of newfy and newfy-derived words within Newfoundland.” He continues to assemble materials for a
digitized dialect atlas of Newfoundland and he responded to “numbers of queries
about Newfoundland vocabulary from many quarters.”
James KOENIG reports
that during the period he
continued his research into the structure and typology of personal names - and
where applicable, family names - in the non-Western world.
Laura
KOSTANSKI, of the University of Ballarat, Australia, is studying Attachment and Interference in Placename Based Identity. Her work has been funded through an
Australian Research Council grant, supported by the Office of the
Surveyor-General, Victoria. She continues
to investigate the meaning of toponyms to people who are faced with a change in
their local placenames. She is currently
convening a toponymy conference in Ballarat.
Éamon LANKFORD is the Director of the Cork and Kerry Place Names Survey in Cork
City, Ireland. Dr. Lankford provided a synopsis
of where the Cork and Kerry Microtoponymy Project in Southern Ireland stands:
Ireland’s
entry to the European Union in 1972 brought about huge economic, demographic,
social and cultural changes. Migration
to cities, urbanization, major infrastructural development, changes in
agricultural and fishing practices along with the explosion of a mass media culture
have altered forever Irish people’s relationship with their place. These changes along with the further decline
of the Irish language as an everyday medium and the breakup of the hitherto
very close traditional interaction of the older and younger generations have
greatly impacted on the knowledge, use and survival of native placenames in
both rural and urban Ireland.
The
principal administrative unit in Ireland since the thirteenth century has been
the County of which there are thirty two.
Each county is divided into smaller units called Baronies which in turn
are subdivided into Parishes which in their turn are subdivided into Townlands. The Townland is the smallest administrative
division in the country, all other territorial divisions -- counties, baronies
and parishes being collections of townlands.
In County Cork, situated in the Southern part of Ireland there are over
5,600 townlands which can vary in size from around 20 to 700 acres. The neighboring county of Kerry has some 3,800
townland units. Every townland,
particularly in rural areas may have its territory divided into several hundred
fields, each having its own boundary and specific minor name. Like any other county in Ireland hundreds of
thousands of minor placenames await collection and mapping. The well thought out methodology for the
collection and mapping of microtoponymy underway in Southern Ireland is as
follows.
Dr.
Éamon Lankford who had since the early 1970s been collecting and mapping minor placenames
throughout County Cork established the Cork and Kerry Placenames Survey in
1996. The objective of this initiative
is to collect, research, collate and map from both oral and literary sources
the minor placenames of two counties in the
South of Ireland and establish by
2009 a County Placenames Archive in each county to house the collection. The Archive will function within the
established Local Government Library network. A small committee of talented young university
graduates was brought together in 1996 to help organise and spread the survey
methodology to every corner of the designated survey area. An advisory council of experts drawn from
university, library, local government, educational and other interests provided
expertise.
The
organizing of the survey involved contacting community leaders, school
authorities and enlisting the support of hundreds of people who were known to
be good carriers of local placenames. By
means of public appeals, visits to schools, lectures, articles, radio,
television and press interviews the Placenames Survey received very favorable
media coverage and consequent widespread public support. Once a local structure has been put in place to
get a survey underway in an area, a public meeting attended by the Survey
Director and members of the Survey Team is arranged where details of the
operation of the survey are given.
Survey Maps are distributed to teachers, community groups and a
timescale is set for the conduct of the survey in each area. During the survey period the Survey Team continues
to communicate with fieldworkers, school authorities and other participants. On
the completion of a survey in a particular area Survey Maps are returned to a
central office in Cork City where the work of collating the data and presenting
it in a user friendly format for consultation by the public takes place. A sample of how the collated data is being
presented in the Placenames Archive can be viewed at http://www.placenames.ie. The information provided in the survey
compilation includes references to Parish and Townland names gleaned from both
manuscript and published sources. This
is followed in chronological order by a listing of minor names in each townland
which have been collected from oral and literary sources. The information on each name includes the
placename itself and the number given to it by the Survey Team on the Townland
Map in which it is situated. The name
and address of the Supplier and Collector of names, the date of collection,
variations of the name, information regarding derivation, descriptions of the
place or feature named, reference to any written sources for the name and any other relevant information are
recorded. Names are tape recorded
wherever possible.
The
Irish Government’s National Training Authority (FÁS), was approached in 1998 to
fund a training scheme for young university graduates who would pursue a
practical course in the methodology of systematically collecting and mapping
from both oral and literary sources, the minor placename heritage of an entire
county. The survey group now has on
contract twenty fulltime staff, as well as ten other part-time fieldworkers, funding
for which is provided by two Irish Government agencies as well as two Local
Authorities and a number of corporate interests. The school authority in over 450 Primary and Post
primary schools along with teachers and their students are helping to organize
local surveys in co-operation with some 60 community organizations. Many others are volunteer fieldworkers who
have been participating in this unique Placenames Survey initiative which has
for ten years spearheaded the methodology for collecting and mapping Irish
placename heritage on a very large scale.
As
the primary objective of the project is the collection and mapping of
placenames, the Survey Team is unable to engage in research or answer questions
about Irish placenames for others until the Placenames Archive has been
established at the close of 2008.
Meanwhile, academic, technical and institutional support towards the
establishment of Ireland’s first County Placenames Archive will be welcome.
André LAPIERRE is
Vice-Dean and Secretary of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa as
well as a Professor in the Department of Linguistics. He has been recently appointed Chair of the
Ontario Geographic Names Board and continues to be active in several Working
Groups and Divisions of the United Nations Group of Experts in Geographical
Names. He is a member of the Organizing
Committee of the XXIIIrd International Congress of Onomastic
Sciences, to be held at York University, August 17-22, 2008. During the past year, Dr. Lapierre’s
presentations include:
§
La Nouvelle-France en Floride? Mais voyons-donc! Remarques sur la
toponymie des Huguenots au XVIe siècle.
Commission
de toponymie, Québec, February 2007.
§
Nova Francia,
Francescane, Nova Gallia. Genèse du NP Nouvelle-France
selon les sources huguenotes au XVIe siècle. Français de France – Français du Canada
Conference, Universität Trier, Germany April 2007.
§
L’énigme du NP Cap Francoys
et le journal de René de Laudonnière.
Annual
Meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Names. University of
Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, May 2007.
§
New Evidence vs Local
Usage : The Conundrum of Name Reconsideration. Council of Geographical
Names Authorities Conference, Lexington KY, October 2007.
More information
about Professor Lapierre is available at his website: http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~lapierre
Edwin
D. LAWSON, Professor Emeritus, State
University at Fredonia, responds that the
following two works are “in press:”
§
“Russian Naming
Patterns, 1874-1990.” Congress Acts.
21st International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Uppsala, August
19-24, 2002. With Irene
Glushkovskaya and Richard F. Sheil.
§
“The Mountain
(Gorskij) Jews of Azerbaijan - Their 20th Century Naming Patterns.” In Aaron
Demsky (ed.) These Are the Names- Studies in Jewish Onomastics. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press. With
Farid Alakbarli and R.F.Sheil.
Dr.
Lawson also presented: “Azeri names:
Meaning and Pronunciation on the Web.” American
Name Society, January 6, 2007. With
During
this period, Professor Lawson developed the following website:
He
is currently researching: West Siberian Turkic Naming Patterns, and is
preparing an Estonian names website. All
of Professor Lawson’s websites may be accessed via: http://edwindlawson.com
Margaret LEE, a Professor
of English and Linguistics at Hampton University, published an article, “African
American Naming Patterns” in the Language Volume (Vol. 5) of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,
Eds., Michael Montgomery and Ellen Johnson, August 2007. The article is an historical perspective on
African American names and naming practices in the United States.
Dr. Lee also presented a paper and a video
presentation on, “Black Southern Church Language” at the annual meeting of the
Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL) in Natchitoches, LA, April 2007.
Jesse LEVITT, Professor Emeritus of Foreign Languages at the University of
Bridgeport spoke in May 2007 at the Names Institute at Baruch College (CUNY) on
“Names in Samuel Beckett’s plays Endgame
and All that Fall.” In September 2007 he delivered an address at
the American Society of Geolinguistics on “English in Israel.”
Stanley LIEBERSON, who is Abbott Lawrence Lowell Research Professor in the Department
of Sociology at Harvard University, published:
§
“The Changing
Role of Nicknames: A Study of Politicians” (with Cathy Kenny). Names: A Journal of Onomastics, December
2007.
§
“Globalization
and First Names” (with Christopher A. Bail, and Mark Pachucki). Presented at
the annual meetings of the Social Science History Association, November 2007,
Chicago.
In 2007, Professor
Lieberson was recognized with the following honors:
§
Co-recipient,
Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Contributions to Methodology, Methodology Section,
American Sociological Association, 2007.
§
Elected a Member
of the American Philosophical Society,
2007.
§
Elected Honorary
Member of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Iota Chapter, Harvard College, 2007.
Donna L. LILLIAN of East Carolina University has “continued to gather
and analyze data from my online survey about women’s surnames and the use of
Ms. as a courtesy title.” To date, she
has approximately 3000 respondents, but “these do not include sufficient
numbers of representatives of all demographic groups” she is interested in, so “the
survey process continues.” In a parallel
track of her research, she continues to engage in and write critical discourse
analyses of political discourse, in particular discourses of the (far) right in
Canada and the U.S.A. She currently
chairs doctoral dissertation committees for two students, “one working on the
discourse of sermons and the second on discourses about Africa in humanities
textbooks.” In addition, she serves on
doctoral committees for students studying discourses of video gaming,
discourses about domestic violence in African-American churches in the U.S.
South, and institutional discourses. Her
recent work related to onomastics includes:
§
“Ms. as a Courtesy Title: Variation through Time and Space.” LACUS
FORUM 33: Variation, ed. Peter Reich,
William J. Sullivan & Arle R. Lommel.Houston, TX: Linguistic Association of
Canada and the United States. pp. 211-218. 2007.
§
“‘Ms.-taken’
Identities?: Changes in Women’s Courtesy Titles.” SHEL-5 (Studies in the History of the English
Language); Athens, GA, Oct. 4-6, 2007.
§
“Social and
Regional Variation in Women’s Marital Surname Choices.” Linguistic Association of Canada and the
United States; Richmond, Kentucky, July 25-28, 2007.
§
“Age, Sex, and Ethnicity in Choice of Courtesy Titles for
Women.” Canadian Society for the
Study of Names; Saskatoon, Canada May 26-27, 2007.
§
“The Politics of
Courtesy Titles: Traditionalists versus
Abolitionists.” Canadian Society for the
Study of Rhetoric; Saskatoon, Canada, May. 27-29, 2007.
§
“Token
Resistance: Ms. through Three Decades of Feminist Struggle.” Georgetown University Round Table;
Washington, DC, March 8-11, 2007.
§
“Changing the
Rules: The Struggle over Women’s
Surnames and Courtesy Titles.” American
Name Society; Anaheim, CA, Jan. 4-7, 2007.
Other
recent work by Dr. Lillian includes:
§
“A Thorn by Any
Other Name: Sexist Discourse as Hate Speech”.
Discourse & Society 18(6),
Nov. 2007.
§
“From Time to
Time, ‘Girl’ May Be Appropriate: Narrative Voice and the Backlash Against
Feminist Linguistic Innovations.” American, British and Canadian Studies 8:
254-262, June 2007.
§
“A Thorn by Any
Other Name: Sexist Discourse as Hate
Speech.” South Atlantic Modern Languages
Association, Charlotte, NC. Nov. 10–12,
2006.
§
“Racism,
Ethnicism, ‘Linguism’: Anti-French and
Anti-Spanish Discourse in Canada and the U.S.A.” Linguistic Association of the Southwest,
Laredo, TX. Sept. 29–Oct. 1, 2006.
§
“Approaching
Hysteria Approaching the Qur’an: The Debate in and about Chapel Hill 2002”,
joint paper with Elizabeth Kearney.
Linguistic Association of the Southwest, Laredo, TX. Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2006.
Myra LINDEN reports
that, though the year has been a trying one for her due to poor health, she did
finish 6th Grade Thinking
through Grammar which she had been working on with her late husband. She also wrote a journal article entitled
“The Harvardization of Rhetoric: From Rhetoric to Literature-Based
Composition.”
Dorothy
LITT has very much enjoyed reading Names:
a Journal of Onomastics. She has
nothing to report for the period but wishes her colleagues well.
Carol LOMBARD, a graduate student at the University of South Africa, is currently working on her Master’s Degree
dissertation research project entitled: Kitsiitsinihka'siminnoonistsi
‘our real names’: An Ethnolinguistic Study of Niitsitapi Personal Names. She is
“pleased to say that much progress has been made in this regard since my last
submission to the Ehrensperger Report.” The overall
objective of her research is to provide an ethnographically-based account of
the role played by personal names and naming practices in Niitsitapi
(Blackfoot) culture, through an investigation of the apparently complex and
multi-faceted relationships between naming phenomena and other aspects of
traditional Niitsitapi socioculture. She
hopes to have the dissertation ready for examination by the spring of 2008.
Ms. Lombard’s research interests focus on
sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics,
and Native American studies.
During this period she published
“Conceptual Metaphors in Computer Networking Terminology” in Southern African Linguistics and Applied
Language Studies 2005, 23(2):177-185.
Emma Woo
LOUIE is “in the process of updating”
her collection of Chinese American surnames in her computer files “in
preparation for revisiting cemeteries to look for more different spellings for
the surnames” she has on file. In
addition, she will be looking as well for “additional Chinese family names.”
MacFarland
& Co., publisher of her book Chinese
American Names, will be issuing a reprint in soft cover at a lower price
than the hardcover book sometime next year.
Mark
MANDEL is the Research Administrator for a Biomedical
Information Extraction project at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Mandel’s professional home page, which he
says “is much in need of updating,” may be found at
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mamandel/index.html. His
personal home page can be found at http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel.
Philip W. MATTHEWS of Lower
Hutt, New Zealand, co-authored two papers with Peeter Päll:
“Some Linguistic Aspects of Exonyms,” and “Māori Names for
Countries - Endonyms or Exonyms?” These
papers were published in: Peter Jordan, Milan Orožen Adamič and Paul
Woodman (eds), 2007, Exonyms and the
International Standardization of Geographical Names: Approaches towards the Resolution
of an Apparent Contradiction, Wiener Osteuropa Studien 24, Vienna, LIT
Verlag GmbH & Co.
Mr. Matthews continues work on
New Zealanders’ personal and surnames and is preparing two papers for
consideration by the selection panel for the ICOS 2008 conference.
Lewis L. MCARTHUR forwarded his report
from Oregon:
§
Renaming Squaw names. The Oregon Geographic Names
Board (OGNB) is assisting in the changing of some 150 “squaw” names in Oregon
in cooperation with federal agencies, Native American Tribes, and interested individuals. Some 35 have been changed, and work is
continuing. The difficult part will be
finding suitable replacements for numerous minor features with no agency
sponsorship and no funding.
§
COGNA. Champ Vaughan, President of the OGNB, was our
only representative at the COGNA Conference in Lexington. Lewis McArthur has serious eye problems and
cannot fly alone. Neither Mary MCARTHUR
nor Cindy Gardiner could attend this year, so he was “homebound.” Schedules next year should permit their
attendance.
§
Oregon
Geographic Names. Lewis and Mary MCARTHUR are doing preliminary
work on the 8th edition of Oregon
Geographic Names. The current 7th edition runs to
almost 1,200 pages and is too thick for easy reference. Toponyms of geographic features make up some
three fifths of the entries, and administrative place names two-fifths. The current thinking is two volumes, one of
geographic names and one of placenames with some duplication of major important
names.
Mary
B. MCARTHUR, See Lewis L MCARTHUR.
Michael F. McGOFF is editor of The Ehrensperger Report and Vice Provost at
Binghamton University (SUNY). Dr. McGoff
serves as Treasurer of ANS and oversees the websites of
the American Name Society as well
as the ANS listserve, both of which are resident on the Binghamton
University (State University of New York) computer system. The listserve, an active forum for the
discussion of onomastic issues, typically has about 200 members.
Dr. McGoff also serves on the Editorial Board for Names: a Journal of Onomastics.
Erin MCKEAN, the Editor of Verbatim, says that, two articles about names by
Robert RENNICK
were published during this period. She
adds that Verbatim “remains interested in onomastic writing for the layperson, preferably
humorous,” and that queries and submissions should be directed to the editor at
editor@verbatimmag.com, or to PO
Box 597302, Chicago IL 60659
Edmund
MILLER of Long Island University
published:
§
“With What
Trivial Weapon Came to Hand: Samson Agonistes in the Wars of Criticism.”
Northeast CCL 2006 Conference Proceedings. Brooklyn: St. Francis College, 2007.
§
“What's She
Talking About?: Post-Feminist Notes on Sexist Grammar.” Belinda Kremer and
Richard McNabb, eds. Collide: Styles,
Structures, and Ideas in Disciplinary Writing. 2nd Edition. Dubuque: Kendall, 2007.
§
“Summer Haiku,”
“Fall Haiku,” “Winter Haiku,” and “Spring Haiku.” Long Island Sounds: 2007: An Anthology of Poetry from Maspeth to
Montauk and Beyond. Eds. Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, Lynn E. Cohen, and J. R.
Turek. Southampton: North Sea Poetry Scene, 2007. 248-49.
§
“Merry Christmas
Haiku Sequence.” PPA Literary Review. 11 (2007): [62].
Mary Rita Miller focused during the period on literature.
Lucie A. MÖLLER See Peter E. RAPER.
Christian MORARU, Professor of American Literature
and Critical Theory at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro Department
of English responds that he is “trying to finish up a book” and reports that he
published: “The Other, the Namesake:
Cosmopolitan Onomastics in Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life” in Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 55.1 (March 2007): 17-36.
Dr. Moraru’s website is: http://www.uncg.edu/~c_moraru/.
Jennifer
MOSS completed her book The One-In-A-Million Baby Names Book, which
will be published in July 2008 by Perigee Press, an imprint of Penguin
Group. In the past year, Ms. Moss,
founder and CEO of babynames.com, has
been interviewed by the CBS Early Show, KPNX Phoenix, the BBC, ESPN and ABC
News on the subject of name trends and name consulting. Ms. Moss also launched a column on
BabyNames.com, where she answers questions on names and the naming
process. BabyNames.com is the top most
visited website on names, receiving over 1.2 million visitors a month.
Michael Dean MURPHY is Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Alabama; his website can be accessed at:
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/murphy.htm.
Tim NAU presented the after-dinner
talk at the annual meeting of Toronto's St. George’s Society last
February. It was about how first names
have changed in Toronto since the Society was founded about 170 years ago. Entitled “First Names in Toronto since the
Early Nineteenth Century, as Evidenced by the Names of the Members of the St.
George’s Society” it referenced some of his previously published material in
addition to his recent analysis of the patterns evident in the first names
of the earliest members of the Society.
Mr. Nau also wrote a book review about the onomastic
implications of Stephen Oppenheimer's Origins of the British (New
York: Carroll and Graf, 2006) that was published in Onomastica Canadiana,
Vol. 89, No. 1 (June 2007).
Lastly, he assisted in the editing of two issues of Onomastica
Canadiana, i.e., Vol. 88, No. 2 and Vol. 80, No. 1.
Bertie
NEETHLING is a Senior Professor
in the Xhosa Department at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville,
South Africa. During this period he
produced: “Names as a Vehicle for Transformation
in the South African Wine Industry,” in Lavric, E; Kuhn, J et al.: Language, Products and Professions: From
Code Choice to Onomastics. (Publisher: Peter Lang).
Professor Neethling
has also submitted the following for publication; most will appear in 2008:
§
“The term ‘Bantu:’
A Reappraisal.” (for Language Matters)
§
“Contemporary
Xhosa Anthroponymy: Shifting Trends.” (for Acta
Academica)
§
“Name Giving Strategies
in Andre P. Brink’s Duiwelskloof/Devil’s Valley.” (for Onoma)
§
“A Drink at
Kwamaliyam? Names of Informal Businesses
in the Cape Peninsula.” (for Nomina
Africana)
§
“Xhosa First Names:
A Dual Identity in Harmony or in Conflict?” (for Names)
§
“Names,
Registration Plates, and Identity” (for Names)
Joel NEVIS presented a paper
entitled “On Grassland Place-Names, Dialect, Regionalisms, and Diffusion” at
the 46th Names Institute, Baruch College, May 5, 2007. The paper may be found
at:
http://www.geocities.com/joelnevis/grasslands.pdf. Mr. Nevis states that, “Place-name generics
referring to open grassy areas (basin,
meadow, prairie, flats, bottom, plain,
glade, plateau, barrens, mesa, opening, savanna, clearing) tell us much
about regionalisms and historical fads, and surprisingly little about dialect boundaries.” In his study he shows how Spanish- and
French-derived savanna, prairie and plateau diffused well beyond their original cultural regions,
though mesa did not. Due to some complementary distribution he
suggests a model of lexical competition.
W.F.H. NICOLAISEN, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and
Folklore at the State University of New York at Binghamton and currently Honorary Professor of English in
the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), as the result of two very successful cataract
operations has returned to reading and writing again. Most of the products of this activity seem to
be still in the hands of editors and publishers. Among his publications are several
contributions to the Encyclopedia of American Folklife, 2006, seven
reviews (some of these in Names: A
Journal of Onomastics) and three articles: “They Come and They Go: Random
Thoughts on the Precarious Life of a Folk-Narrative Genre” (in: Basis 3
[2006] 137-144; “Teaching Names: A Personal Account” (in: Onoma 39
[2004-7] 19-28; and “Gaelic sliabh Revisited” (in: A Grey Eye Looks
Back, eds. K. Hollo and S. Arbuthnott, Clann Tuirc, 2007, 175-186. Professor Nicolaisen also contributed lectures
on name-studies to an audio-visual course of the University of the Highlands
and Islands.
Alleen NILSEN, and Don NILSEN, Professors of English at the University
of Arizona, and
Co-Presidents of the American Name Society, say that their “biggest
project this year was finishing our book and getting it published by the
Scarecrow Press, which specializes in books of interest to
librarians. The title is Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature.” They begin the book by explaining that “teenagers
are especially interested in names and naming because they are vitally
involved in developing their own identities as they say goodbye to who
they were as children and hello to who they will be as adults.” They
then show how many of the most respected authors of books
marketed to the teenage audience make full use of names and naming for literary
purposes. They “begin with one of the
most obvious uses, which is to create humor.”
In following chapters the Nilsens show how authors use names
to establish tone and mode, to help develop an historical time
frame, to establish realistic settings, to establish imagined settings, to
reveal ethnic values, to build a dual audience of both adults and young
readers, and to create memory hooks. Material in three of the chapters
was developed directly from presentations they had prepared for the
annual meetings of the American Name Society.
Frank
NUESSEL, Professor of
Linguistics at the University of Louisville and incoming
editor of Names: a Journal of Onomastics
continues to be a very active and productive scholar. His publications for the period include:
§
Medical Interpreting and Cross-cultural Communication. C. V. Angelelli. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Lingua 117: 317-321.
§
“Interlinguistics.”
In: Polimetrica: The Language of Science.
Ed. by Giandomenica Sica. Milano. Online Encyclopedia.
§
“Strategies for
Developing Listening Skills in AP Italian.” AP
Central. On line article.
§
Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. Edited by R. Márquez Reiter and M. E. Placencia. Amsterdam:
Benjamins. Lingua 117: 727-732.
§
“Virtual Augusto
Ponzio.” In: S. Petrilli (ed.). Philosophy
of language as the art of teaching. Bari: Edizioni del Sud. pp. 205-211.
§
“Five Ideas for
the Spanish Classroom.” Hispania 90:
131-133.
§
“Thomas A. Sebeok
and Applied Semiotics.” International Journal of Applied Semiotics 5:
13-19.
§
“The ‘Nuessel-Stewart Ageism Rating Instrument’:
Literature Review, Format, Implementation, Recommendations for Usage.” In: W. H.
Miller (Ed.) Advances in Communications
and Media Research. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Pp. 29-51.
§
“Collecting: A
Semiotic Perspective.” In: S. Monahan, B. Smith and T. Prewitt (eds.), Semiotics 2004/2005. Ottawa: Legas. Pp.
218-232.
§
“I nomi e i
cognomi italiani: sitologia per i docenti.” Cultura e comunicazione 1: 36,
60. New journal published by Guerra in
Italy. Features articles by Danesi, A. Ponti, A. Vitti, and other well-known
Italian scholars.
§
“Spanish
Phonology and Morphology.” David Eddington. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lingua 117: 1821-1825.
§
“Gesture and
Language.” Semiotica 166: 463-476.
§
“The Workbook in
Elementary Italian Programs.” Italica
84: 42-58. (with Enza Antenos-Conforti).
§
Bad Language.
Edwin L. Battistella. Oxford: Oxford UP. Language
Problems and Language Planning 31: 67-71
§
Cultural and Linguistic Policy Abroad: The Italian Experience. Maria Totaro-Genevois. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Language Problems and Language Planning
31: 76-79.
§
Spanish Pragmatics. Rosina Márquez Reiter and María Elena Placencia. Bastingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan. Language Problems and Language Planning 31:
91-94.
§
Language and Aging in Multicultural Contexts. Kees de Bot and Sinfree Makoni. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters. Language Problems
and Language Planning 31: 100-103.
§
Adesso. M.
Danesi. Boston: Thomson Heinle. The
Modern Language Journal 91: 316-317.
§
Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions. Hauppauge, NY: Barrons.
§
Spanish for the Health Care Providers. Hauppauge, NY: Barrons.
During this period Professor Nuessel also presented
the following papers:
§
“The Study of
Names: Past Research and Future Projects.”
American Name Society. Anaheim, CA. January 2007.
§
“The New AP
Italian Language and Culture Course and Exam.” Kentucky Foreign Language
Conference. April 20, 2007. Lexington, KY.
§
“Results of the
First AP Italian Language and Culture Exam, and How to Prepare for the Next
One.” American Association for Italian Studies. Colorado Springs, CO. May 4,
2007.
§
“Risultati del
primo esame AP Italiano: Feedback e consigli.” American Association for Italian
Studies. Colorado Springs, CO. May 4, 2007.
§
“The Integration
of Songs and Music into the Spanish Curriculum.” AATSP Convention. San Diego,
CA. August 2007 (With April Marshall).
§
“Meet the
Development Committee.” National AP Conference, Las Vegas, NC, July 13, 2007
(with Elissa Tognozzi and Rosa Bellino-Giordano).
§
“Internet
Resources for AP Italian.” National AP Conference, Las Vegas, NV, July 13,
2007.
§
“Word Games: A
Semiotic Perspective.” Semiotic Society
of America Conference. October 5, 2007.
§
“Results of the
Second AP Italian Exam.” American Association of Teachers of Italian
Conference. Washington, DC. October 13, 2007.
§
“Establishing AP
Italian Exam Validity Using College Professors' Grading Standards.” ACTFL,
November 17, 2007, San Antonio, TX. (with David Baum, ETS).
§
“The AP Language
and Culture Exam – Year 2.” ACTFL-AATI
Meeting, November 17, 2007. San Antonio, TX.
§
“A Selective
Review of Research on Spanish in the United States.” MLA. Chicago, IL. December 29, 2007.
Dr.
Nuessel’s outstanding scholarship and contributions to his profession were recognized
by the University of Louisville during the period:
§
Recipient of the University Award for Distinguished Service
to the Profession; and,
§
Recipient of College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished
Service Award for “Service to the Profession.”
Priscilla
A. ORD, who, in
“pre-retirement,” teaches as an adjunct lecturer in English at McDaniel
College, the former Western Maryland College, in Westminster, MD, is
the current first vice president of the American Name Society. The duties
of her office, which involve planning the annual meeting, “leave her
little time to follow her own interests,” but for the past two years, she has
involved her students in a project entitled Naming
the Halls of Ivy. The assignment requires them to research and report
on the history behind the names of the buildings on the McDaniel campus,
including brief biographies of the people for whom the
buildings were named. In addition, the final paper is designed to
exhibit at least six of the forms of expository writing they have studied during
the semester, such as the process involved in naming a campus building,
a classification and division of the campus buildings based on their
function, a comparison of the patterns of naming buildings on campus, an
exemplification of how their designated building was named, a
detailed description of their building, and a narration of
the life of the person after whom their building has been named.
Roger L. PAYNE, Executive Secretary (1993-2006), U.S. Board on Geographic
Names; Manager, Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) (1979-2006),
reported last year that he “retired from active service in the Federal
Government on May 31, 2006.” He was
asked, however, to continue as a rehired annuitant (consultant) to assist
during office transition and realignment, and is still performing this
function. Specifically, he monitors the
websites of the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and the U.S. Board
on Geographic Names responding to inquiries and analyzing notifications of
errors and new data submitted. He also continues
to direct and participate in the PAIGH (Pan American Institute of Geography and
History) course on geographic names on behalf of the U.S. Geological Survey. Mr. Payne has been asked to serve as the
recording secretary for the Board’s Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names
(ACAN).
Mr.
Payne also reports that “all copies of
Place Names of the Outer Banks have been sold (except for a handful
of hardbound copies), and even though the publisher has asked for a revision,
there has been little progress because of various other activities and
projects.” He also provided seven book
reviews (not toponymic), on Earth Science and Geography, five of which were
children’s series.
The
19th course in applied toponymy offered by the Pan American
Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
May 7 - 18, 2007. There were 31
students, “and thus far, more than 500 students have participated in the
courses where they receive lectures in various methods and procedures for
standardizing geographic names as well as participating in a field exercise for
collecting data, and an automation workshop.”
Mr. Payne organized the course and served as principal instructor.
He
also attended officially and participated in the annual conference of the
Council of Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA) 2007, October 2-6, 2007 in
Lexington, Kentucky where numerous policy issues were discussed and
debated. Mr. Payne also attended
officially and participated in the annual conference of the Council of
Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA) 2006, October 17- 21, 2006 in Boulder,
Colorado.
Lastly,
Mr. Payne attended Naming
Places / Placing Names: An International Workshop held
October 13-16 at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He says that he “was honored to be the
invited speaker [he is an alumnus of the Graduate School in the Department of
Geography] at the conference banquet where he discussed the nature and function
of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names as well as presenting a paper on applied
toponymy to the conference.”
Charles
PFUKWA is the Coordinator of the Communication Skills Centre
at Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He has just completed his doctoral thesis
entitled the Function and Significance of War Names in the Zimbabwean Armed Conflict
(1966-1979). In his research Dr. Pfukwa investigates the
onomastic patterns and processes that influenced the creation of war names in
the Zimbabwean conflict. He brings theoretical
insights from identity studies to bear on his analysis of the data. He writes that: “Professor Edwin LAWSON
has greatly influenced” his work and he “is eternally grateful for his support
over the years.” In addition to
onomastics Dr. Pfukwa is interested in sociolinguistic issues in a
multicultural and multilingual environment and how these influence
TESOL/ESP/EAP in African universities. He
also hopes to “contribute to growth of African studies on the American
continent.” He hopes “to attend ANS annual conferences, do post doctoral work
on nicknames (especially war names) in other parts of the world and represent
his country in UNGEGN.”
His recent publications include:
§
“Negotiating Identities: Zimbabwe’s noms de guerre
in Zimbabwe’s Liberation war.” Paper
presented to Colloquia Linguistica : Unisa 5 November 2004.
§
“Ndiwe Ani Iwe!” (Who goes there?) Identities in Zimbabwean
noms de guerre.” Paper presented
to the Linguistics Society Seminar: University of Zimbabwe. 17 March 2005.
§
“From Nyaronga to Penhalonga – Portuguese influence on
Zimbabwean Onomastics.” Paper presented to the first Linguistics
Society conference at University of Zimbabwe, 17 May, 2005.
§
“Creating and Concealing Identities in Zimbabwean War Names.” Paper presented to Colloquia
Linguistica. University of South Africa, 15 September 2005.
§
With L.A. Barnes: “Breaker of Dogs and Other Species: The
Animal Name in Guerrilla Nicknames.” Paper presented to LSSA/SAALA Conference: 5-7 July:
Durban 2006.
§
“Exploring Memories through Names: An analysis of Thomas Bvuma’s
Every Stone That Turns.” Paper presented to the Department of
English and Communication, Midlands State University, Gweru, 12 September 2007.
Dr. Pfukwa’s works in progress are:
§
“Ethnic Slurs as War Names in the Zimbabwean Conflict
(1966-79).” (With L.A. Barnes), Names: A Journal of Onomastics. (Submitted).
§
“The Martial Name
in Zimbabwean War Names.” Language
Matters. (Submitted).
§
“Unwritten Ethics
And Moral Values: The Human Face of Zimbabwe’s Liberation War.” Chapter In Vambe, M. T. (Ed) Orality and
Cultural Identities In Zimbabwe. Mambo Press, Gweru. 2002.
§
“Zimbabwean noms de guerre: Corruption
of Language or Onomastic Innovation?” in Language Matters 34: 2003.
§
“The
Role of the Zimbabwe Open University in Open and Distance Learning in Zimbabwe.”
(with J. Matipano); In Progress Volume
28 (1 & 2) 2006.
§
“Their
Own Godparents: Guerrilla Nicknames.” In Zimbabwean Review. Vol. 4, No
3, 1998.
Barry POPIK notes that he “moved from New York City to Austin, Texas in
late September” and that he has “added a Texas
Dictionary section to his website (www.barrypopik.com). It now contains “about 900 entries on
quotations, food terms, slang, nicknames, slogans, etc.” He also posted to the American Name
Society Listserve (ANS-L), his discovery of the origin of the city name Marfa (TX), which is now part of the
Marfa, TX Wikipedia page. More work by Mr. Popik may be found in Comments
on Etymology and daily on the American Dialect Society web site, www.americandialect.org, in the archives. See
Also, Gerald L. COHEN.
Terrence M. POTTER of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown
University published “USMA Nicknames: Naming by the Rules” in the Festschrift in honor of Edwin D. Lawson,
Names: A Journal of Onomastics.
December 2007. Dr. Potter says that, “selected nicknames or new names that
cadets have assigned are described. These names follow linguistic rules but
when deployed their use serves to bend other rules that cadets follow.”
Professor Potter also completed a review of Native
American Placenames of the United States by William Bright. His ongoing
work includes preparation of a paper for the annual conference of the American
Name Society in Chicago. His analysis
seeks to describe Iraqi personal Arabic names and compare them with other first
names.
Margaret S. POWELL is Government
Information Librarian Emerita, The
College of Wooster Libraries. She
responds that “although there is very little new or different to report this
year,” she continues to “build a database of the published literature on
geographic names in the United States and Canada.” This covers works appearing since 1982 when
the third edition of the Bibliography of
Place Name Literature was published and represents a project which has been
continued in her family since 1938. A
supplement in Names: A Journal of
Onomastics covering 1980-1988, a north central regional list, and an author
list for Donald Orth have been prepared and published since the third edition. Although she says that she is “still using
old software,” she is “exploring conversion of the database to another “live”
program or medium, to insure computer search-ability of its contents.
Ms. Powell’s other major
scholarly project is “also between software programs.” She continues to transfer to a computer
database the massive WPA imprint records for Missouri, which will cover the
publication history of the state beginning with the first printing press in
1808 through 1876.
Richard
R. RANDALL says that while he was not “active in research or teaching for the past year,” he
was involved with various programs. He
especially “took interest in a conference on geography sponsored by the
Association of American Geographers and the Pan American Institute on Geography
and History (PAIGH) in Chile in May.”
Dr. Randall’s interest was related to the fact that in 1987 he had
initiated a series of annual classes to teach principles of names
standardization to Latin-American member nations of the Pan American Institute
of Geography and History. (“They have
been sponsored by PAIGH and successor agencies of the US Defense Mapping
Agency since then; the 20th class took place in Brazil this year.”) Accordingly, he reports, he “provided
materials to the conference for two reasons.
First, to describe the names courses so participants could understand
the importance of accurate names; and second, to foster an interest by the two
organizations to initiate joint efforts to work with names.” The Secretary General of PAIGH, Santiago
Borrero, will publish an article Dr. Randall prepared on this topic in Revista Cartografica. For a few days in August, he attended the 9th
UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in New York. He “was there to provide information about an
exhibit of four panels featuring Dr. Meredith Burrill, a major voice in
founding UN programs on names, as well as the Executive Secretary of the UN
Board on Geographic Names from 1943 to 1973 and, of course, perhaps the world’s
foremost expert in toponymy.” The
display was mounted near the conference room and featured text which Dr.
Randall prepared as well as pictures of Dr. Burrill at various sessions. In addition, he “enjoyed seeing many
colleagues from other countries” with whom he had worked over the years.” One of these colleagues “was a geographer from
South Korea” who invited him “to attend a seminar his government later
sponsored in Washington that related to the dispute between the Republic of
Korea and Japan over the name of the body of water between the two countries
(East Sea preferred by the ROK and Sea of Japan preferred by Japan).”
Peter E. RAPER, former chairman of
the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), along with Lucie A. MÖLLER, send their usual
excellent report from South Africa:
Research into Bushman roots of
‘Bantu’ place-names
Peter E. Raper has
been appointed Research Associate attached to the Unit for Language Management
of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. In this capacity he presented a paper on United Nations Resolutions pertaining to the
names of seas and oceans at the 13th International Seminar on
the Names of Seas and Oceans held at the University of Vienna, Austria, from 26
to 28 April 2007. A paper by him has
been accepted for presentation at the conference
on Trends in Toponymy: Indigenous
Identity and Theoretical Developments in Place-names Research which is to
be held from 26 to 30 November 2007 at the University of Ballarat in Victoria,
Australia.
Dr. Raper is currently engaged in research into
Bushman influence on place-names deemed to be derived from African (‘Bantu’)
languages, and presented a paper on Khoisan
influence on Zulu Place-names at the 14th Congress of the Names Society of
Southern Africa held at the Ithala Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal from 26 to 29
November 2006. The Bushmen inhabited the
southern portion of Africa for many thousands of years. African or Bantu peoples who migrated
southwards from Central Africa took over many of these names, adapting them to
their respective phonological systems. Initial
results reveal that numerous names hitherto considered to be Sotho, Tsonga,
Swazi, Venda, Zulu, and so forth, are in fact adapted Bushman names. These include some ‘African’ names that have
replaced former names of cities and towns, such as Tshwane (Pretoria),
Lephalale (Ellisras), Modimolle (Nylstroom), Mogwadi (Dendron) and Metsimadiba
(Waterval Bo), as well as African-language allonyms such as Mangaung
(Bloemfontein), uKhahlamba (Drakensberg), Mzinyathi (Wakkerstroom), Ncome
(Blood River), and Tlokwe (Mooi River, Potchefstroom). Investigation into the Bushman origin of names
deemed to be from African languages, and ‘corrected’ in accordance with current
orthographic rules of these languages, reveals that the names as first recorded
and used were correct and the ‘corrected’ versions incorrect. Thus Kurrichane,
recorded in the 1820s, is closer to
the cognate Bushman name than Kaditshwene,
recorded for the first time in 1937; Marico
(and the Afrikaans form Mariko) is closer to the underlying Bushman
words mari and koe than the Tswana adaptation Madikwe,
Pudimoe closer to the Bushman
components pudi and moe than the Tswana replacement Pudumong, and so forth.
Drs. Raper and Möller also report the death of Mr. Luis Abrahamo
of Maputo, Mozambique. He passed away on
3 October 2007 after an illness that hospitalized him in New York. Mr Abrahamo was Vice-President of the Names
Society of Southern Africa (NSA) and Chairman of the Africa South Division of
the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), a Division
which comprises Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South
Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He
initiated the establishment of a Portuguese-speaking Division of the UNGEGN. As the Mozambican expert to the United Nations
Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), Luis had been active in UNGEGN
meetings and United Nations Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical
Names in New York, Geneva, Berlin and Vienna. He was a participant in United Nations
training courses on geographical names in Southern Africa since 1992, and
arranged two training courses in Maputo, in 2004 and 2006, involving
participants from Brazil, Egypt and Tanzania, as well as from the member
countries of the Africa South Division. He
was in the process of arranging a UNGEGN training course in Angola in 2008. In collaboration with Professor Adrian KOOPMAN, current President of the Names Society of
Southern Africa (NSA), he arranged the 13th Congress of the NSA in Maputo in
2004. In 2006 Luis was co-founder of the
Names Society of Mozambique, which is intended to involve the participation of
academics and researchers to support the activities of the National
Geographical Names Council of Mozambique, established in pursuance with
Resolution 4 of the First United Nations Conference on the Standardization of
Geographical Names. Mr. Abrahamo’s
dynamic leadership and initiatives will be sorely missed at the national and
international level in the important work on the standardization of
geographical names.
Lastly, Dr. Raper and Dr. Möller each presented a paper at a
conference on Standardization of Geographic Names which was held in Seoul,
Korea, on 6 and 7 December 2007. Dr. Möller spoke on “Dual names of Maritime
Features -With Special Reference to the Involvement of the Working Group
on Evaluation and Implementation of the UNGEGN in this Regard,” and Dr. Raper
on “Extended United Nations Resolution of Names of Maritime Features.”
Henry A. RAUP continues his work on
the placenames of Mount Desert Island, Maine and is now preparing a final
draft.
Alan RAYBURN attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the
Study of Names, held at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, May
26-27. He delivered a paper entitled “Naming
Airports After Canadian Politicians.” Mr. Rayburn attended the Council of Geographic Names Authorities
(COGNA) in Lexington, Kentucky, October 10-15. He reports the sessions
and the trip through the Bluegrass Region and to Frankfort, the state’s capital
“were excellent.” Mr. Rayburn is planning to attend the annual American Name Society (ANS) meeting
in January, 2008 in Chicago. In October
he updated the ANS Bylaws.
Mr. Rayburn also reports that the homepage for biographies of
deceased specialists in the Who Was Who
in North American Name Study (www.wtsn.binghamton.edu/onoma)
remains active. The biography of Kelsie Harder was added to the Name
Study in October. “Kelsie may have been
the greatest contributor to the ANS. He edited and produced the journal
NAMES for more than 20 years.”
Robert M. RENNICK writes that “within the past year” he has
published articles on Knox County, Bell County and Pulaski County, Kentucky
post offices in several issues of LaPosta
(The Journal of Postal History). Another
article on Kentucky mill names appeared in The
Millstone which is published by the Kentucky Old Mill Association. Kentucky
Explorer features articles by Mr. Rennick on Kentucky’s named rocks in
several of its issues.
In addition to his publications, Mr.
Rennick continues his “involvement with Kentucky’s Phase Two” of their GNIS contract
and he recently served as the co-chair of the 2007 COGNA conference.
Dorothy Dodge ROBBINS of the English
Department of Louisiana Tech University, with Christine DEVINNE,
co-edited a special topics issue of Names: a Journal of Onomastics on “Women's Names and Naming
Practices.” Dr. Robbins also wrote the introduction
for that issue (September 2007). During
the period, Professor Robbins presented “Mapping the Heartland: Upper Plains
Place Names in Jon Hassler's North of Hope” at the 2007 American Name
Society Conference in Anaheim, CA.
Three of her articles appeared in Magill's
Survey of American Literature and six articles appeared in Masterplots
II: Christian Literature. In
addition, she has “two articles on names in process and some release time this
spring to work on them.”
Adrian ROOM responds that “2006 saw the publication of Nicknames of Places
and 2007 that of The Pronunciation of Placenames.” He is currently working
on a new and enlarged edition of African Placenames, due for publication
in 2008. Also in 2008, he will embark on
Alternate Names of Places, which is due for publication in 2009. All of these titles are or will be published
by McFarland off Jefferson, North Carolina.
Jennifer RUNYON continues to serve as Senior Researcher in the
Geographic Names Office at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, and
as Deputy to the Executive Secretary, U.S. Board on Geographic Names/Domestic
Names Committee (DNC). She is
responsible for researching all toponymic issues prior to their consideration
by the DNC. She also answers toponymic
inquiries from Federal, Tribal, State, and local agencies and the general
public, and provides support for the maintenance of the Geographic
Names Information System (GNIS).
In October 2007, Ms. Runyon attended the annual conference of the Council of
Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA) in Lexington, Kentucky, where
she participated in the monthly meeting of the DNC and in the annual
State-Federal Roundtable.
Maggie SCOTT, Senior Editor of Scottish Language Dictionaries, responds
that her “research interests include lexicography and Scots and English
historical linguistics.” Her
publications for the period are:
“Previck
and Lickprivick: Onomastic
connections in South-west Scotland,” Nomina
29, pp. 115-28. (2006).
Skandinavisch-Schottische
Sprachbeziehungen im Mittelalter. Kries,
Suzanne. Review Article. (University Press of Southern Denmark, Denmark: 2003),
Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 1,
pp. 175-179. (2007).
Dr. Scott is also “involved in other work in progress,
including acting as Editorial Adviser for Professor
NICOLAISEN’s forthcoming Dictionary
of Scottish Place-Names. The website
for Scottish Language Dictionaries is: www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk
Jack SHREVE states that his
“research interests are surnames and
placenames (Italian, English, Spanish and German primarily), genealogy (my own,
of the U.S. Presidents, and of others), critiquing contemporary historical
interpretations of past events in American history (Civil War, colonial
history, abolitionism), and the theory of translation of poetry (from all
languages, including Chinese).”
Professor Shreve, who recently retired, is the author of 500 book
reviews of varying lengths that have appeared over the years in Hispania, Choice, Library Journal
and the Maryland Historical Magazine. He will deliver a paper at the annual meeting
of the American Name Society in Chicago in January 2008.
Ralph SLOVENKO, Professor
Law and Psychiatry at the Wayne State University Law School replies that he has “an abiding, though
casual interest in names” but that he is “not actively engaged in any ‘name work’.” During this period Professor Slovenko
published “Nonsexist Language: Empowering Women, Dethroning Men” in the Journal
of Psychiatry & Law 35. (Spring 2007): 77-104.
Grant SMITH, Professor of English and
Coordinator of Humanities at Eastern Washington University, reports that his publications
for the period are:
§
“What do We Want
to Know about Place Names?” In: Surnames,
nicknames, placenames and epithets in America: Essays in the Theory of names,
ed. Edward Callary, Lewiston, New York: The Mellen Press, 213-224.
§
“Teaching Onomastics
in the United States.” Onoma 39. Appeared 2006.
§
“The Influence of
Name Sounds in the Congressional Elections of 2006.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics, December 2007.
§
“Names as Art: An
Introduction to Essays in English.” Onoma 40. 2007.
Dr. Smith’s presentations included:
§
“The Influence of
Name Sounds in the Congressional Elections of 2006.” LSA/ANS, Ontario, CA.
(January 2007).
§
“Current Trends
in Literary Onomastics.” MLA, Philadelphia, PA. (December 2006).
§
“Language, Literature,
and the Teaching of Onomastics.” Canadian Society for the Study of Names,
Toronto, Ont. (May 2006).
He served professional societies in the following
capacities:
§
Assistant Program
Chair of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences in
Toronto.
§
Guest-editor,
ONOMA 40 -- editing completed June, 2007.
§
Member, Washington State Board of Geographic Names
1988-present. (State Dept. of Natural Resources). (He is one of three citizen members appointed
by the Commissioner of Public Lands and is the longest serving member).
Professor Smith’s other recent activities
include: Dissertation Research Advisor
for Harumi Kuroda, Department of English, Mukogawa Women’s University,
Nishinomiya, Japan; Research Grant for Compiling a Bibliography on
Shakespeare’s Naming; and, in August of 2007, Dr. Smith served as an expert
witness for Winstead PC in Dallas, TX.
Paul
SORVO says that he has continued doing translation work for
his church, Laestadian Lutheran Church, headquartered outside of Minneapolis,
in Loretto, MN. In addition to the
religious and historical translation from Finnish into English that he has
done, he has begun to develop a glossary of biblical terns translated from
Finnish into English with idioms from scripture, where possible. He continues his interest in placenames.
Ted STEVENS responded to
say that his area of research interest is the “As His Name is so is He”
phenomenon.
Alexandra SUPERANSKAYA published six new articles and
republished her books: General Theory of Proper Names, 368 pp; Name - Through Lands and Ages, 192 pp.; Theory and Methodology of Onomastic Studies, 256 pp., in collaboration; General
Terminology, Parts 1-2, 248 pp.; and 288 pp., in collaboration.; On Russian Names, 304 pp., in collaboration. In addition, her Dictionary of Russian Personal Names was reprinted (Moscow, 2006).
Ken TUCKER wrote a paper
with Pablo Mateos on the “Distribution of
Spanish Names.” It is presently being
reviewed for Names: A Journal of
Onomastics along with another of his contributions, “U.S. Given Name
Distribution Trends in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries.” Nomina 2007 will include Dr. Tucker’s
paper “Surname and Given Name Distribution Prints for Several Countries
including U.S., Canada, and UK,” and Nomina
2008 will publish his paper presenting an analysis of the recent Reaney
& Wilson work.
Professor Tucker has begun the initial support work
for Patrick Hanks for a possible United Kingdom
Surname Dictionary.
Lastly, Dr. Tucker as a member of an Ad hoc committee
appointed by the Executive Council, lead the successful effort to move the
administration of the membership of the American Name Society and the
publication of Names: A Journal of
Onomastics to Maney Publishing.
Willy VAN LANGENDONCK of the Department of Linguistics, Instituut voor Naamkunde & Dialectologie
at the University of Leuven (Leuven, Belgium) writes
to say that he published the following:
§
Theory and Typology of Proper Names (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 168).
Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007; xvi-378 pp.
§
“Proper Names and
Forms of Iconicity.” In: Willems, Klaas, ed., Special issue ‘Syntactic
Categories and Parts of Speech’ of Logos
and Language. Journal of General Linguistics and Language Theory 5/2, 2004
(Tübingen: G. Narr), p. 15-30.
§
“Taalfilosofie en linguïstiek als complementaire
benaderingen van taal.” Review article of: W.A. de Pater & P. Swiggers,
Taal en teken. Een historisch-systematische inleiding in de taalfilosofie
(Wijsgerige Verkenningen 21). Leuven: Universitaire Pers / Assen: Van Gorcum,
2000. Leuvense Bijdragen 92, 2003
[2005], 1-16.
§
“Proper Names and
Proprial Lemmas.” Proceedings of the XXIst
International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (Uppsala 2002), ed. by Eva
Brylla and Mats Wahlberg, vol. I, p. 315-323. Uppsala: SOFI. 2005.
§
Paper read for Prof. em. Dr Karel Roelandts as his
successor in the Koninklijke Academie
voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde [Royal Academy for Dutch Linguistics
and Literature (in Belgium)] (2005).
§
“Semantic
Considerations in Recent Onomastic Research: a Survey.” In: History of the
Language Sciences. An International
Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Languages from the Beginnings to the
Present (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science). Ed. by S. Auroux, K.
Koerner, H.-J. Niederehe & K. Versteegh. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2006,
art. 234, p. 2229-2234.
The following works are in the process
and will be published:
§
“Proper Names as
the Prototypical Nominal Category.” Keynote address at the 13th International
Congress of the Names Society of Southern Africa (Maputo 2004).
§
“Not Common Nouns
but Proper Names are the Prototypical Nouns.” Paper read at the 22nd
International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (Pisa 2005).
§
Lectures in
Prague (2005), Riga and Vilnius on the theory of proper names (2006).
§
“The Classification
of Foundling Names vs. Ordinary Surnames.” Paper read at the 14th International
Congress of the Names Society of Southern Africa (KwaZulu, Ithala 2006).
§
“Are Proper Names Pronouns with Fixed Reference?” (with Mark Van de Velde) Review article of: Anderson,
John M. 2007. The Grammar of Names.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. To appear in Studies in Language.
Non-onomastic contributions and
communications are: