The Ehrensperger Report is a publication of the American
Name Society (ANS). This
document marks the 47th year of its publication.
As usual, it is a partial view of the research and other activity going
on in the world of onomastics, or name study.
It is named in honor of Edward C. Ehrensperger, one of the founders of
ANS, who for over twenty-five years, from 1955 to 1982, compiled and published
this annual review of scholarship.
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. Examples are the
reports from South Africa, Norway and Israel, three countries where name study
is very active. 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 e-mail,
since it is much more efficient to edit text already typed than to type the
text myself, but for those not using e-mail, I strongly encourage sending me
written copy. There is some
danger in depending on electronic copy: sometimes diacritical marks or other
formatting matters may not have come through correctly.
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, rather than include
addresses and telephone numbers as part of the entry, I have gathered all of
those that were submitted in a separate list.
The list, such as it is, is available to members of the American Name
Society through a request to me at mmcgoff@binghamton.edu.
In keeping with the spirit of onomastics, I have
attempted where possible to report on research and publication under people’s
names. I have also attempted to
locate topics of interest and then cross-list them with one or more names.
This approach results in an incomplete index, but it should permit
locating most of the important areas of research over the last year.
In the main entries, I have listed names of contributors in bold
capitals. Topics and
cross-references to topics are in bold mixed capitals and lower case letters.
When you see a name or topic in bold letters in the body of an entry
you should expect to find a main entry in its proper alphabetical order.
For the first time this year, I have made liberal use of
hypertext for the web version of this report.
Many of the entries in bold are also hyperlinks.
Simply clicking on them with your mouse 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
bolded, clicking on it will produce that person’s email address.
In the cross references, clicking on a person’s name will bring you
to his or her main entry. In a
few 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 above
on the American Name Society hyperlink. I
hope that by using hypertext in much of this year’s Ehrensperger Report, I
have made it easier and more efficient to use.
Edward Callary is the editor of the official journal of the American Name Society, Names: A Journal of Onomastics. Look in the December issue for the latest style sheet.
Michael McGoff maintains the ANS Electronic Discussion Group. If you wish to take part in the interesting discussions that often start up on this site, 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 e-mail address to the list and you will receive all notices that are posted. You will also be able to send notices (and you must join the list to do this).
Dr. McGoff
also maintains the home pages for both the American Name
Society (ANS)
and the Placename Survey of the United States
(PLANSUS).
The
Ehrensperger Report
Michael F. McGoff, Vice Provost
State University of New York at
Binghamton
Binghamton, New York 13902-6000
Africa.
See Sales
African-American Names. See Lee
John ALGEO had a very productive year. His publications in print and forthcoming for this period are noteworthy. Perhaps the most notable is The Cambridge History of the English Language, volume 6: English in North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, for which he served as editor. In the area of onomastics he produced, “A Fancy for the Fantastic: Reflections on Names in Fantasy Literature.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics, (forthcoming) and “Thomas Pyles (1905-80),” which appears in the ANS website Who Was Who in North American Name Study. In addition, he published some personal memories of Frederic G. Cassidy in the DSNA Newsletter 24.2 (Fall 2000): 3.
Professor Algeo also published during the period:
“The Motto of American Speech.” American Speech 75 (2000): 244–6;
“Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Channeling.” In the Concise Encyclopedia of Language and Religion, ed. John F. A. Sawyer and J. M. Y. Simpson, 92–3, 95, 242–3. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001;
“Examples as Textual Evidence in a Dictionary of Briticisms.” Lexicographica 16 (2000): 47–57;
“External History.” In The Cambridge History of the English Language, volume 6: English in North America, ed. John Algeo, (in press);
“The Origins of Southern American English;” in a Festschrift on Southern American English, ed. Steve Nagle, (forthcoming).
He published reviews of:
More Englishes: New Studies in Varieties of English 1988–1994 and Even More Englishes: Studies 1996–1997, by Manfred Görlach. Journal of English Linguistics 28 (2000): 197–201;
American English: Dialects and Variation, by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. Language 76 (2000): 194–6;
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, by Steven Pinker. Journal of English Linguistics 28 (2000): 393–5;
Languages in Britain and Ireland, by Glanville Price. Language Problems & Language Planning, (in press);
Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe, by Glanville Price. Language Problems & Language Planning, (in press);
The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide. Journal of English Linguistics, (in press);
Language Policy: Dominant English, Pluralist Challenges, ed. William Eggington and Helen Wren. Language Problems and Language Planning, (in press);
Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on the Official English Movement. Vol. 1, Education and the Social Implications of Official Language. Vol. 2, History, Theory, and Policy, ed. Roseann Dueñas González with Ildikó Melis. World Englishes, (in press);
Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It’s Heading, by Naomi S. Baron. Language Problems and Language Planning, (in press);
The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. American Speech, (forthcoming).
American
Dialect Society (ADS). See Popik
American English. See Algeo, BUTTERS,
Read
American Name Society.
(ANS) See CALLARY,
GASQUE,
FINKE,
MCGOFF
American Society Of Geolinguistics. See Ashley, Levitt
Jay AMES, now in his 90s, writes that while he is still very much interested in “odd ball” names, he finds it increasingly difficult to continue collecting them. He has assembled a small but significant research library on Canadian, American, and British names, mostly, but also some on Middle Eastern and Asian names.
ANS Website. See McGoff
Antarctic Names. See Yost
Arabic Names. See Lance
Leonard
R. N. ASHLEY, Professor
Emeritus, Brooklyn College CUNY, continued to serve on the executive
committee of the American Name Society but concentrated more on
non-onomastic publications during this period.
He was re-elected (as he has been every two years since 1991) to the
presidency of The American Society of Geolinguistics (ASG) and
published with Wisdom House (UK, U.S., and India) 14 collected and revised
geolinguistic essays, Language and Modern Society.
He was co-editor of the proceedings of the 2000 international
conference sponsored by ASG and the CUNY Academy of Humanities and Sciences
(where he serves on the program committee).
His address to the conference appears in the proceedings, Language
Across Borders, edited by Wayne FINKE and
Professor Ashley. He published
articles (including a 70 page multi-language bibliography on the subject) and
“many reviews” in Geolinguistics 26 and 27, and
reviewed “a couple of dozen books” for that journal.
He notes too that ASG celebrated Allen Walker READ’s
95th birthday.
He continued, as he
has since the sixties, as regular book reviewer for Bibliothèque
d'Humanisme et Renaissance (Geneva).
Each year he reviews “a couple of hundred books on The Renaissance”
in his three chroniques. Dr.
Ashley also reviewed for Names: A Journal of Onomastics.
He presented papers at the 40th Names Institute on
onomastic devices in satire and was “delighted that Baruch College CUNY made
it possible for W.F.H. NICOLAISEN to come
from Scotland to deliver the keynote address.”
He also contributed biographies of Margaret M. Bryant and Robert A.
Fowkes to Alan RAYBURN’s Who
Was Who in North American Names Study project.
When Mellen Press
rejected completed books by some authors he had recruited as general editor,
he “quit the general editor job” and withdrew his own books (Cornish
Names, Names in Place, Names in Literature, Names in Popular Culture, and Art
Attack: Names in Satire) which he “will publish on-demand online through
Xlibris.” All of the “Mellen books” mentioned, and a novel (What
I Know About You), will be published by Xlibris by the end of 2001.
The previously unpublished papers of Allen Walker
READ (q.v.), which Professor Ashley edited for Mellen publication,
will appear as scheduled, as will some other books he arranged for the press.
He especially hopes that Edward CALLARY’s
collected papers (since 1979) from Names: A Journal of Onomastics
will be published (“not by Mellen, though they published his collected
papers of the North Central Names Institute in 2000”).
In 2001 he continued
also with literary criticism, with the acceptance of his second article by Hamlet
Studies (in India) and his first on the diaries of Anais Nin (printed in Anais:
An International Journal). An
article on the ethics of scholarly reviewing has been accepted for 2002 by the
Journal of Journalism Ethics. In
2001, as well, he published two more books in his ongoing series on the occult
(Barricade Books in the US, some reprinted by three UK publishers): The
Complete Book of Werewolves; The Complete Book of Dreams; and
What They Mean. He signed
for The Complete Book of Sex Magic, to appear in Spring 2002, as well
as for his Dictionary of Sex Slang.
All of these, he writes, “have certain interesting onomastic aspects,”
which he includes “in all my work whenever possible.”
He wrote more biographical entries for the vast Oxford University Press
project of the New Dictionary of National Biography.
He completed his report with the statement that he “looks forward to
seeing old friends at ANS in December,” where he delivered a paper on
“Kansas Placenames.”
María
BARROS
made a presentation entitled “Los
nombres propios y la traducción: de Hook al Capitán Garfio.”
It was delivered at the 42nd Annual Conference of the American
Translators Association, Los Angeles, October 31-November 3, 2001.
Her paper is included in the proceedings of the conference.
Herbert
BARRY III
informs us that in July 2001 he became
Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is expanding his research on fictional namesakes of authors.
He described 12 characters named Charles or Charley in
novels by Charles Dickens in a Modern Language Association session at the
annual meeting of the American Name Society, December 2000, in
Washington, D.C. He previously
discussed two characters named Jane in novels by Jane Austen.
He has subsequently identified fictional namesakes of other authors.
In Vanity Fair, a “novel without a hero” by William
Thackeray, William Dobbin is the most admirable man.
In Babbitt by Harry Sinclair Lewis, Henry T. Thompson is the
father-in-law of the title character. In
The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand, John Apley is the son
of the title character.
Professor Barry and Aylene S. HARPER are
expanding their research on differentiation between male and female first
names by the last letter, reported in an article “Three Last Letters
Identify Most Female First Names.” These
last three letters are a, e, and i.
The article appears in the August 2000 issue of Psychological
Reports, volume 87, pages 48-54. A
new paper by these authors is “Persistent Popularity of Male Last Letter in
Female First Names.” It was
presented at the 40th annual Names Institute on 3 May 2001, at Baruch
College in New York City. Professors
Barry and Harper are presently preparing a report on the 100 most frequent
male and female names among residents of the United States in 1950 and 1990
and of England and Wales in 1994. They
have also completed a data file of thousands of first names in the English,
German, French, and Spanish languages. These
names are listed in two books, A World of Baby Names (1996) by Teresa
Norman and People’s Names (1997) by Holly Ingraham.
C. Richard BEAM, at the Center for Pennsylvania German Studies at Millersville University, writes to say that Pennsylvania Dutch placenames “will be an integral part” of his comprehensive Pennsylvania Dutch to English Dictionary that he believes will be published next year. Although he presently has no separate publications on Pennsylvania German (Dutch) placenames, he continues to record them as he finds them. The latest local name he acquired from an Old Order Mennonite (Fuhre Mennischt) informant was Danne Barig, i.e. Thorn Hill.
Thomas
L. BERNARD,
Professor of Education and Psychology Emeritus at Springfield College,
Massachusetts, was the featured
speaker at the Christmas meeting of the Welsh Society of Western New England
where he spoke about “Welsh Personal Names: Their Origins, Meanings and
Significance.” He was also the
invited speaker at the winter meeting of the World Affairs Council of Western
Massachusetts in Springfield and spoke on the topic of
“Avoiding Insensitive Language in Travel and Business Overseas.”
He published: “Anglophone: Friend or Foe” which is about
differences between British and American English in Word Ways: The Journal
of Recreational Linguistics, Vol. 34, No.3.
Professor
Bernard has agreed to teach a course at Springfield College in the Spring
Semester 2002 on “Onomastics: The Significance of Names.”
As
usual, Dr. Bernard has been very active in giving talks on names to local area
clubs, church groups and social and civic organizations.
BGN.
See U.S. Board on Geographic Names
Biblical Onomastics.
See DEMSKY
Bibliography. See Powell
Brand Names. See Clankie, PILLER
William BRIGHT, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics & Anthropology at UCLA, is in the last year of his project that has the working title “Native American Placenames of the U.S.” (NAPUS). This is a large etymological dictionary of U.S. placenames of American Indian origin. He plans to send a draft manuscript to the University of Oklahoma Press late in 2001. In the meantime he continues to serve on the Colorado State Board of Geographic Names, and to correspond with colleagues around the country on the issue of eliminating the word “squaw” from official placenames. He continues as well to write a placename column for the quarterly Newsletter of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. Recent topics have been: July 2000, “Tucson and Arizona;” Oct. 2000, “Creek (Muskogee);” Jan. 2001, “Must Every Name Have an Etymology?;” April 2001, “Navajo Placenames;” and July 2001, “Koyukon Placenames.”
Professor Bright’s website is: http://www.ncidc.org/bright.
Ronald
BUTTERS reports that his chief
linguistic interests are in American English,
with a particular focus on the 20th and the 21st
centuries; social and regional variation; and lexicography. He has interests, as well, in the field of linguistics and
law. During the past year
he has consulted with a number of law firms concerning trademark issues.
In onomastic studies, he limits his work primarily to Trademarks.
During this period he has presented two papers of onomastic interest:
“The Notion ‘Genericness’ in Lexicography, General Linguistics,
and American Trademark Law.” International Association of Forensic
Linguists, Malta, July 4, 2001; and “Electronic Searches as Source of Data
for Social Variation in the Lexicon: Trademark
and Service Mark Issues for ‘Kiss My Grits,’ Candy ‘Kisses,’ and ‘Beanies’.”
Third UK Conference on Language Variation, York, England, 21 July 2001.
Enzo
CAFFARELLI, the Editor
of Rivista Italiana di Onomastica-RIOn, offered a seminar on Introduction
to Onomastics Studies at the University of Rome. More than 100 students of General Linguistics and History of
Italian Language attended his seminar.
As editor of RIOn, he has
organized a network of international correspondents which now includes 35
countries, including Ukraine, Slovenia, Slovakia, Basque country, Baltic
countries, Russia, Australia; and scholars such as Aaron
DEMSKY (Ramat-Gun, Israel), Sheila Embleton (Toronto), Doreen
Gerritzen (Amsterdam), Milan Harvalik (Praha), Isolde Hausner (Wien), Edwin
LAWSON (Fredonia, NY), Alexandra
SUPERANSKAYA (Moskva).
News about activities, meetings, and publications related to the
American Name Society and ANS members are regularly published in
many sections of the review, sometimes through reference to The
Ehrensperger Report.
In the last year Dr. Caffarelli
has published in RIOn many reviews of Italian and international books,
the annual “Italian Onomastic Bibliography,” and several articles.
Among them, “Sul genere dei nomi delle squadre italiane di calcio
in Italia” (On the gender of
the names of soccer teams in Italy); “Nomi commerciali come memoria
storica: le agenzie turistiche italiane”
(Trade names as historical heritage: the case of Italian travel
agencies); “Progetti culturali, sociali ed economici finanziati dalla
Commissione Europea: un esempio di riciclaggio di nomi propri”
(Cultural, social, and economic projects financed by the European Commission:
an example of proper names recycling); “Sui
derivati da nomi propri nel Gradit” (About proper names and their
derivatives in Gradit [a new 6-volume Italian dictionary project
directed by past Italian Minister of Education Tullio De Mauro]).
His recent efforts have
concentrated on a special RIOn issue honoring the Galician linguist,
philologist and onomast Fernando R. Tato Plaza, who died of cancer at the age
of 37 in January 2000. Tato had
been the organizer of the XXth International Congress of
Onomastic Sciences (ICOS)
in Santiago de Compostela (September 1999).
The overall theme of the review, “Naming as Keeper and Promoter of
Ethnic, Linguistic and Cultural Identity” suggested a large number of
different approaches. Several of
the contributions are conceived as starting points for work on this very broad
topic. For the first time, RIOn
has proposed a monographic issue, dedicated to a theme of particular interest
for culture in general, and not only for linguistic, literary or historic
disciplines. For the first time,
as well, it contains papers mainly written in languages other than Italian,
with three articles in Spanish, three in French, three in Catalan, one in
Asturian, along with three in Italian.
During 2001, Dr. Caffarelli,
together with Doreen Gerritzen, conducted an international investigation on
the most frequent first names in 2000, contrasted with past lists in 20th
century. More than 30 countries
on all of the continents are involved in this inquiry.
Results and discussion will be published in the first RIOn issue
in 2002. He has also coordinated
another survey: Onomastics Today: Some International Points of View,
which includes some 40 of “the most well known, esteemed scholars in all of
the world.” The main questions
addressed are:
·
What are the most significant
advances that onomastic sciences have recorded on the international level, and
specifically in your country, in the last 10-20 years?
·
What aspects of name studies should
be deepened and which specifically need new stimuli and new energies?
·
What aspects of name studies are
most needed in order to strengthen onomastic studies all over the world?
And, What should be done (especially by international associations and the
academic world) to help foster countries and scholars that have been left
behind, to be involved in the future of such studies?
·
What should be done to promote the
teaching of onomastics at universities?
And, Do you think there should be onomastic teaching and research at the
primary and secondary school levels?
·
What are the onomastic
trends that are about to develop in the next ten years?
RIOn will publish a version in Italian (and/or French and Spanish) of the
results. But “all the texts
will be available for any other review (in its original language), for those
interested in publishing them in another language.” A synthesis of the
answers will be presented in August 2002 in Uppsala, at the XXIst International
Congress on Onomastic Sciences.
Dr. Caffarelli has also prepared a
chapter on “Dialectology and Onomastics” for a forthcoming volume in the
series La nostra lingua. Biblioteca storica di linguistica italiana
(Our Language. Historic Library of Italian Linguistics), published by UTET in
Turin; and a chapter from the same issue will be available at Italica on
the Web, an on-line educational program edited by RAI (National
Radio-Television).
In April 2001, Dr. Caffarelli
attended the International Congress of Catalan Toponymics and Onomastics
as a member of the scientific committee. At
the congress a new Society of Onomastics for Hispanophon Scholars was
established.
Finally, in the last year Dr.
Caffarelli published a study in literary onomastics devoted to the toponyms in
the books of Andrea Camilleri (for many years the most popular writer of
police novels in Italy) and some 20 articles to popularize the analysis of
street names, Italian given names and surnames, history of toponyms,
deonomastic words, etc., especially in ANCI (Italian Communes National
Association) and SEAT (National Society of Yellow Pages), using new
unpublished data on frequency and rank of Italian family names at national,
regional, and local levels.
His focus is presently on a
project dealing with a great dictionary of Italian surnames.
It will have over 40,000 entries and is expected to be completed by the
end of 2004.
California Geographic Names.
See DURHAM
Edward
CALLARY,
Editor of Names:
A Journal of Onomastics, reports that 2001 “was an excellent year
for the journal, which published the usual 4 numbers, all on time.”
The year’s numbers are dedicated to a celebration of the golden
anniversary of the American Name Society (ANS).
Number 4 (December 2001) is a special issue given over to short
personal essays from ANS members with their thoughts, reflections, and
reactions to the past 50 years of ANS and the study of names.
Professor
Callary published a short article “Names and American English” in the
Fall, 2000 issue of American Speech; another, on “Nicknames on the
Plains” will appear in the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, to be
published by the University of Nebraska, and another, on names in the Midwest
will appear in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of the Midwest, to be
published by Ohio State University.
He
remains an indefatigable (well, he says, “sometimes fatigued”) proselyte
for names and onomastics. In
addition to a dozen or so media interviews and radio appearances, he made
three presentations on names to groups on the Northern Illinois University
campus: one to the linguistics colloquium on Names and American English,
another to the Honors Program Speaker Series on Names and American Society,
and another to the geography colloquium on the Geographic
Names Information System.
He also consulted (“with trailer credit”) on the 2 hour Family
Tree program presented on the History Channel in September.
[See also LOUIE].
Dr. Callary indicates that he is currently perplexed by the name Henpeck,
which referred to a campground and watering hole for 19th century travelers in
the neighborhood of current Elgin, Illinois.
Canadian Society for the Study of Names (CSSN). See Kerfoot, LAWSON, ORTH, RAYBURN, TUCKER
D.
Allen CARROLL,
who is Professor and Head of the Department of English at the
University of Tennessee, continues to work on the treatment of names in Early
Modern English literature. He is
especially interested in the coded names of real people.
His article, which appears in the next volume of Spenser Studies
(Volume 16), explains as rebuses the elaborate drawings in the margins of a
1588 MS poem in praise of Spenser's Faerie Queene recently turned up in
the Edinburgh Library by his colleague Joseph Black.
The subtitle of the article is “Reading the Rebuses.”
He argues that; read properly, the drawings identify in many ways the
author of the poem, who is otherwise unidentified.
They are of toes and mazes and hares.
If one understands that one name then for the hare was Wat,
one can see in about six rebuses that the poet was Thomas Watson (toe-maze
Wat’s in), a major poet of the day.
Chinese-American Names.
See Louie
Chinese Family Names.
See LI
Church Names. See ZELINSKY
Shawn
CLANKIE
currently teaches in the Institute
of Language and Culture Studies at Hokkaido University.
His 2001 publications on names are:
He also made two presentations:
“An Overview of Genericization Theory (Brand
Names).” Presented to the
English Department, Northern
Mary
CLAWSEY, who is with the Department
of Humanities and Media at Coppin State College in Baltimore, says that she
has no scholarly
work in the name field to report for this year.
Her interest in names is mostly in personal names -- their meanings,
fashions and trends, and the development of such practices as giving middle
names (“three of my great-grandfathers but only one of my great-grandmothers
had middle names”) and using family names as given names.
She says, “I cringe when I encounter literary characters with names
that don’t match their culture or era (like a Saxon woman named Gwyneth) and
could write an article on classical Roman naming practices for historical
novelists if there were any interest in it.
There's certainly a need!”
COGNA.
See Council of Geographic Names Authorities.
Gerald L. COHEN, at the University
of Missouri-Rolla, published the Dictionary of 1913 Baseball and Other
Lingo, vol. 1, A-F. It is
subtitled: Primarily from the
Baseball Columns of the San Francisco Bulletin, Feb. - May 1913,
213 pages and is published by Professor Cohen.
You may contact him for purchasing details at gcohen@umr.edu. He indicates, “This book is not primarily about onomastics
but does contain some onomastic items, e.g. Boostown (Los Angeles), Brick
(nickname for redhead Bill Devereaux), Cerro-Concretes (name of a team
in spring training), Eggtown (Petaluma), Old Betsey (a player’s
trusty old baseball bat).”
He also published “Shoeless Joe Jackson Was Once Shoeless (One Shoe
Off) Prior To
The
Time He Is Said to Have Received His Nickname” in Comments on Etymology,
Oct. 2000, vol. 30, no. 1, pp.18-19; and “‘The Big Apple’ Prostitution
Etymology” in Comments on Etymology, May 2001, vol. 30, no. 8,
pp.4-16.
Coltharp,
Lurline H., Collection of Onomastics
Commission de toponymie du Québec See DORION
Commission nationale de toponymie de France See DORION
Computer and Domain Names. See
Clankie
Council of Geographic Names Authorities (COGNA). See Julyan, Lance, MCArthur, Orth, Payne, RAYBURN, SMITH, Yost
CSSN. See
Canadian Society
for the Study of Names.
Cuban Names. See FINKE
Dictionary
of American Family Names. (DAFN) See TUCKER
Danish Placenames. See Fellows-Jensen
Aaron DEMSKY, who is Director of The Project for the Study of Jewish Names at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, say that “during this past academic year there have been various activities in the study of Jewish Names.” They “fall into three categories - classes and lectures; publications; and conferences.”
In the first semester of 2000/2001, he taught an undergraduate course in Biblical Onomastics. It included: the structure and etymology of biblical names; literary aspects (wordplays, fanciful explanations, name-giving practices, etc); and placenames in the Holy Land.
He also presented lectures to academic and lay audiences in North America and in Israel on the topics of “Jewish Names as a Cultural Code” and “Toponymic Traces of Three Semitic Cultures (Phoenician, Arab and Jewish) in Iberia.”
He reports that, “two graduate students in the Department of Jewish
History expressed interest to do their doctoral studies in Jewish onomastics.”
One wants to research the topic of Jewish names in the Persian and
Hellenistic periods as indicators of cultural and religious values.
The other is interested in the adoption of Romanian personal and family
names by Jews between 1860s to World War II as an indicator of cultural
assimilation and political emancipation.
Professor
Demsky’s These Are The Names: Studies
in Jewish Onomastics Vol. 3 is in press. It follows the format of his
earlier volumes: this anthology of seventeen essays is divided into an English
section, containing 7 articles and a Hebrew section of 10 papers.
Each article is abstracted in the opposite language. There are also
three indices in Hebrew, Latin and Greek alphabets of names studied in these
papers. The articles reflect the
interdisciplinary nature of the subject.
The book is scheduled to be out in Spring 2002, published by Bar-Ilan
University Press, Ramat-Gan, Israel. For further detail on
this volume
Click
Here
Dr. Demsky adds, “Papers submitted to the fourth volume of These Are The Names, honoring our eminent colleague, Professor Edwin D. LAWSON, are now being edited.” The first volume of These Are the Names (Ramat-Gan, 1997) has been reprinted after selling out some 700 copies.
With obvious excitement, he indicates, “The highlight of the year was the Fifth International Conference on Jewish Names that was held on August 13, 2001 in Jerusalem, Israel as part of the 13th World Congress of Jewish Studies. For the second time now, the sponsoring body - The World Union of Jewish Studies - has recognized Jewish onomastics as an academic discipline in its own right.”
The one-day conference had six sessions reflecting the multifaceted nature of the subject (to see the program Click Here. There were nineteen speakers, five of whom came from outside of Israel. Some were senior scholars and others graduate students. Over 150 academicians attended the lectures during the day. In the sixth session, in honor of Professor Edwin D. LAWSON, the noted American sociologist Dr. Stanley LIEBERSON of Harvard University presented the address. “Ed responded with a review of the state of published research on Jewish names. A showing of Alan Berliner’s film The Sweetest Sound followed this.” Abstracts of the papers and addresses of the lecturers are available upon request to Professor Demsky at: demskya@mail.biu.ac.il
Christine DE VINNE,
who teaches at Ursuline College in Ohio, is vice-president of the American
Name Society and chair of the annual ANS program committee. To take a look at the program for 2001
Click
Here. Her research
interests include “literary name study and life writing, particularly
confessional narrative.” As a
corollary, she studies hagiographical names, both historical and contemporary.
Digital Gazetteer of the United States.
See PAYNE
Henri DORION of Université Laval in Québec published the following during this period:
“Toponymie, normalisation et culture.” Bulletin des sciences géographiques, Alger, April 2000, pp.3-6; and “Should all Unofficial Place-names be Eliminated?” Names: A Journal of Onomastics, 48.3/4, pp. 249-255.
He also
attended the International Workshop on Exonyms, GeoNames 2001 in
Berchtesgaden, Germany where he delivered: “Exonyms: Goals and Problems.” The
France-Québec Joint Exonym Project.
This project has been designed to create and maintain a database of
French exonyms of topographic and administrative territorial features
worldwide (3,000 to 4,000 entries). It
is in cooperation with the Commission de toponymie du Québec and the Commission
nationale de toponymie de France, and is a contribution to the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names
(UNGEGN) program. He is
also currently working on Geographical Nicknames in which he is
establishing a database of geographical nicknames (it is now up to 5,400
entries, worldwide). His
objective is a publication on the subject (about 8,000 nicknames, with
appropriate explanations). He adds, “Contributions will be most welcomed!”
David
L. DURHAM reports that, in
2001, Word Dancer Press put out in a series of books based on his California’s
Geographic Names, published in 1998.
The series, called Durham’s Place Names of California,
comprises fourteen paperback volumes. Each
volume covers part of California, and all together, the series encompasses the
whole state. Writer’s International Network gave the series its Golden
Award in the Category of Travel in 2001. The little books are said, “to
be small enough and handy enough to make good travel companions.”
Jürgen EICHOFF made a presentation at a conference in Munich last year on the Americanization of German surnames as part of his language contact studies. A lengthy and positive report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung then resulted in his being asked to co-edit a volume on name studies put out jointly by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache and the Duden publishing house. It appeared in October:
Jürgen Eichhoff, Wilfried Seibicke,
Michael Wolffsohn, eds. Name und Gesellschaft. Soziale und historische
Aspekte der Namengebung und Namenentwicklung. Mannheim/Leipzig/Wien/Zürich:
Dudenverlag, 2001. Paper, 320 pp. (Thema Deutsch, vol. 2).
Nine articles in it are devoted to given names, five to family names,
and three to street names. Dr.
Eichoff’s contribution to the volume is:
“Die Anglisierung deutscher Familiennamen in den USA,” pp. 244-269.
He has also continued working on the Dictionary of German Place Names in
Pennsylvania, together with Dr. Peter Dräger of Göttingen, Germany.
They have identified close to 800 names of cities, villages and towns.
Most are of the surname+ town/ville type (“Schaefferstown”), but
there are also those based on Germany (“Little/New Germany”) or German
places (“Heidelberg”), or persons of German descent (“Sigel,” “Humboldt”).
Dr. Eichoff finished the fourth (and last) volume of his Wortatlas
der deutschen Umgangssprachen last fall.
He will be
retiring by the end of the fall semester and move to Germany but his
expectation is to return regularly to finish the dictionary.
Jane ELLINGTON
has published
an article entitled “College Students’ Given names: A test of the
Preference-feedback Hypothesis” in the Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 31, pp. 157-169.
Matt
ENGEL, in the Department of
Geography at the University of Nebraska has “not published any research in the field of onomastics this past
year.”
Exonyms.
See DORION
Gillian
FELLOWS-JENSEN writes
that, since her last report
she produced:
“J. McN. Dodgson and the Place-Names of Cheshire,” in Northern
History XXXVIII, 1 (2001), 153-57;
“Danish Place-Names in Scotland and
Scottish Personal Names in Denmark: a Survey of Recent Research,” in Denmark
and Scotland: the Cultural and Environmental Resources of Small Nations. Historisk-fiolosofisk
Meddelelser 82. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab (Copenhagen,
2001), 123-38;
Denmark and Scotland: the Cultural and Environmental Resources of Small
Nations. Historisk-fiolosofisk
Meddelelser 82. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, edited by
Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Copenhagen, 2001, 256 pp.;
“In the Steps of the Vikings,” in Vikings and the Danelaw.
Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress,
Nottingham and York, 1997, ed. J. Graham-Campbell et al. (Oxford,
2001), 281-88;
“Forgængelighedens marked eller stednavnenes liv før dommedagen”,
in Studier i Nordisk Filologi 78 (2001), 71-77;
“Nordic Names and Loanwords in Ireland”, in The Vikings in
Ireland, edited by Anne-Christine Larsen (Roskilde, 2001), 107-13;
“Vikings in the British Isles: the Place-name evidence”, in Acta
Archaeologica 71; Acta Archaeologica Supplementa II (2000), 135-46;
She is also arranging, together with Peter Springborg, the Seventh
International Seminar on Care and Conservation of Manuscripts. This is to be held in the Royal Library, Copenhagen, April
18th-19th 2002.
They are presently busy editing the proceedings of the previous
seminar, held in October 2000.
Her current projects include a comparison between Nordic names in the
Danelaw and those in Normandy; personal names in the North Atlantic Area in
the Viking period; by-names in the Viking period; the dating of
placenames in –thorp; and an Icelandic tradition about the survival
of Harald Godwine’s son after the Battle of Hastings.
Jean Spencer FELTON, M.D., regrets that she has no new onomastic material to report and looks forward to next year.
Wayne H. FINKE, of Baruch College (CUNY), continues to serve as executive secretary-treasurer of the American Name Society (ANS). He organized the 40th anniversary sessions of the Names Institute in May 2001 at Baruch. For the keynote address W.F.H. NICOLAISEN presented “Uses of Names in Fiction.”
Other papers presented at the conference were:
“Persistent Popularity of Male Last Letter in Female First Names,” Herbert BARRY III.
“Uphill Battle: The Perils of Naming Corporate America,” Chris James, Naming Consultant, Cintara.
“American Yoga and Sanskrit Names,” Diane M. Sautter, Northern Michigan University.
“The Intermittent Progression of Country Names in Africa,” PIERRE SALES, Independent Scholar.