This paper synthesizes and summarizes a selection of literature—largely anthropological and ethnographic, published between the early 18th and early 21st centuries—that describes the practice of renaming a person who is physically ill in order to affect their recovery. In none of these publications is this particular practice central; rather, it is often mentioned alongside myriad other cultural and naming practices. While no claim is made as to the exhaustive nature of the literature review, this analysis reveals patterns and similarities related to the reasoning behind such a practice and the special relationship between personal names and physical health in a wide variety of world cultures.
{"title":"\"A Change of Name during Sickness\"","authors":"R. Fielding","doi":"10.5195/names.2023.2514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2023.2514","url":null,"abstract":"This paper synthesizes and summarizes a selection of literature—largely anthropological and ethnographic, published between the early 18th and early 21st centuries—that describes the practice of renaming a person who is physically ill in order to affect their recovery. In none of these publications is this particular practice central; rather, it is often mentioned alongside myriad other cultural and naming practices. While no claim is made as to the exhaustive nature of the literature review, this analysis reveals patterns and similarities related to the reasoning behind such a practice and the special relationship between personal names and physical health in a wide variety of world cultures.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47682384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As a subtype of toponym, hydronyms reflect people’s perception, understanding, and contemplation of waterbodies. With data collected from authoritative gazetteers, this study classifies the names of 189 major rivers distributed across Mainland China into seven categories to extrapolate general rules governing river-naming in China. The results show that descriptive names comprise the biggest share. Based on this study’s research findings, this article also discusses the complex cognitive processes, including conceptual metonymy, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual blending involved in river-naming in China. Specifically, based on the principles of proximity and prominence, the most frequently employed types were the following metonymies: PLACE FOR RIVER, PROPERTY FOR RIVER, PERSON FOR RIVER, EVENT FOR RIVER, and FUNCTION FOR RIVER. As this research shows, river naming in China is not arbitrary, but highly motivated.
{"title":"Exploration of River Names in China","authors":"Yuan Sun, Xiangyong Jiang","doi":"10.5195/names.2023.2410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2023.2410","url":null,"abstract":"As a subtype of toponym, hydronyms reflect people’s perception, understanding, and contemplation of waterbodies. With data collected from authoritative gazetteers, this study classifies the names of 189 major rivers distributed across Mainland China into seven categories to extrapolate general rules governing river-naming in China. The results show that descriptive names comprise the biggest share. Based on this study’s research findings, this article also discusses the complex cognitive processes, including conceptual metonymy, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual blending involved in river-naming in China. Specifically, based on the principles of proximity and prominence, the most frequently employed types were the following metonymies: PLACE FOR RIVER, PROPERTY FOR RIVER, PERSON FOR RIVER, EVENT FOR RIVER, and FUNCTION FOR RIVER. As this research shows, river naming in China is not arbitrary, but highly motivated.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45236611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On the surface, Yangsook Choi’s The Name Jar (2001) is a simple story of a very young immigrant girl who considers changing her name so her new classmates will like her. Embedded within the story, however, are key onomastic concepts and questions: What are names? Who decides our names and how? Can we choose different names for different contexts and should we? If we change our names, does who we are change? I revisit scholarly conversations about onomastic theory and discuss narrative as a means of knowing. I draw on Nikolajeva’s (2003) work in narrativity, that is, the ways in which the narrative encourages or discourages deeper thought about the implications of the text. Using analytic reading strategies, I demonstrate how Choi’s uses of verbal and visual narrative devices give the story depth and create space for readers, including scholars, to parse out and ponder onomastic concepts and questions for themselves.
从表面上看,杨秀惠(Yangsook Choi)的《名字罐子》(the Name Jar,2001)是一个简单的故事,讲述了一个非常年轻的移民女孩考虑改名,这样她的新同学就会喜欢她。然而,故事中嵌入了关键的经济学概念和问题:名字是什么?谁决定我们的名字,如何决定?我们能为不同的上下文选择不同的名称吗?我们应该这样做吗?如果我们改名,我们的身份会改变吗?我重温了关于拟声理论的学术对话,并讨论了叙事作为一种了解的手段。我借鉴了尼古拉耶娃(2003)在叙事方面的工作,即叙事鼓励或阻碍对文本含义进行更深入思考的方式。运用分析性阅读策略,我展示了崔对语言和视觉叙事手段的使用如何赋予故事深度,并为包括学者在内的读者创造空间,让他们自己解析和思考经济概念和问题。
{"title":"Planting Seeds in Literary Narrative","authors":"Anne W. Anderson","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2467","url":null,"abstract":"On the surface, Yangsook Choi’s The Name Jar (2001) is a simple story of a very young immigrant girl who considers changing her name so her new classmates will like her. Embedded within the story, however, are key onomastic concepts and questions: What are names? Who decides our names and how? Can we choose different names for different contexts and should we? If we change our names, does who we are change? I revisit scholarly conversations about onomastic theory and discuss narrative as a means of knowing. I draw on Nikolajeva’s (2003) work in narrativity, that is, the ways in which the narrative encourages or discourages deeper thought about the implications of the text. Using analytic reading strategies, I demonstrate how Choi’s uses of verbal and visual narrative devices give the story depth and create space for readers, including scholars, to parse out and ponder onomastic concepts and questions for themselves.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46002770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A child’s personal name is an integral part of their identity. Names and name negotiation in children’s picturebooks can explore this connection by narrativizing the impact of positive and negative experiences involving name-carriers, name-givers, and name-users. In this study, we began with a framework combining a socio-onomastic perspective with the children’s literature metaphor of “mirrors and windows” (Bishop 1990) and the educational research concept of “damage and desire” narratives (Tuck 2009). Our content analysis of twelve picturebooks featuring characters with culturally and linguistically diverse names led to a coding scheme of six common episodes of name negotiation in the picturebooks’ narrative arcs: (1) inflicted damage; (2) internalized damage; (3) supplying desire; (4) internalized desire; (5) asserting the desire; and (6) joining the desire. Our findings highlight how episodes of damage focus on the pain, sadness, and struggle name-carriers undergo, while episodes of desire center the support of parents and teachers as well as detailed cultural and familial information about names. We conclude that while both “damage and desire” episodes contribute to the narratives, too heavy a focus on damage could lead to the perpetuation of a “single story” (Adichie 2009) that normalizes pain and struggle as an inevitable experience for children with linguistically and culturally diverse names.
{"title":"\"My Name Is...\"","authors":"C. Thomas, Blessy Samjose","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2468","url":null,"abstract":"A child’s personal name is an integral part of their identity. Names and name negotiation in children’s picturebooks can explore this connection by narrativizing the impact of positive and negative experiences involving name-carriers, name-givers, and name-users. In this study, we began with a framework combining a socio-onomastic perspective with the children’s literature metaphor of “mirrors and windows” (Bishop 1990) and the educational research concept of “damage and desire” narratives (Tuck 2009). Our content analysis of twelve picturebooks featuring characters with culturally and linguistically diverse names led to a coding scheme of six common episodes of name negotiation in the picturebooks’ narrative arcs: (1) inflicted damage; (2) internalized damage; (3) supplying desire; (4) internalized desire; (5) asserting the desire; and (6) joining the desire. Our findings highlight how episodes of damage focus on the pain, sadness, and struggle name-carriers undergo, while episodes of desire center the support of parents and teachers as well as detailed cultural and familial information about names. We conclude that while both “damage and desire” episodes contribute to the narratives, too heavy a focus on damage could lead to the perpetuation of a “single story” (Adichie 2009) that normalizes pain and struggle as an inevitable experience for children with linguistically and culturally diverse names.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46752983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Translating a name in children’s literature can be a delicate process, one that may be further complicated when the protagonist involved is a “Psammead”, a truly magical beast that is grammatically referred to with the pronoun “it”. This paper looks at the naming solutions utilized in three different French translations of E. Nesbit’s work. It examines the difficulties of translating names from English, a language with natural gender, into French, a language with grammatical gender. Using close text analysis and reader-response surveys, this article investigates readers’ cognitive responses, and determines whether readers of the English and French texts construct the same mental representation of the Psammead. As will be shown in this study, naming decisions made for translations can modify more than just the grammatical gender seen on the page. When an “it” becomes an “elle” or “she”, a mythical creature can become completely re-gendered.
{"title":"Psammead or It","authors":"M. Bardet","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2469","url":null,"abstract":"Translating a name in children’s literature can be a delicate process, one that may be further complicated when the protagonist involved is a “Psammead”, a truly magical beast that is grammatically referred to with the pronoun “it”. This paper looks at the naming solutions utilized in three different French translations of E. Nesbit’s work. It examines the difficulties of translating names from English, a language with natural gender, into French, a language with grammatical gender. Using close text analysis and reader-response surveys, this article investigates readers’ cognitive responses, and determines whether readers of the English and French texts construct the same mental representation of the Psammead. As will be shown in this study, naming decisions made for translations can modify more than just the grammatical gender seen on the page. When an “it” becomes an “elle” or “she”, a mythical creature can become completely re-gendered.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48456239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1936, Elvira Theodolinde Bauer, a German kindergarten teacher and would-be graphic artist, wrote and illustrated a picturebook that would eventually become a classic of anti-Semitic children’s literature. Entitled Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid! [Trust neither a fox on a green heath nor a yid upon his oath!]1 (Bauer 1936), the work was published and distributed by the infamous Nazi propagandist and publisher Julius Streicher—the Führer of Franken and the producer of the incendiary anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stürmer. After providing historical background on Streicher, Bauer, and the poisonous fruit of their literary collaboration, this article examines how character names in Trau keinem Fuchs were used to plant misinformation about and sow hatred against Jewish people living in the Reich. As this article also shows, by utilizing the names of real-life victims of Fascism, Bauer’s fairy tales effectively blurred the line between fact and fiction for adult and child readers alike. The article ends with a discussion of the urgent need for more research into the ways hate groups, past and present, use names to indoctrinate new members, both great and small.
1936年,德国幼儿园教师、未来的平面艺术家Elvira Theodolinde Bauer创作并绘制了一本画册,该画册最终成为反犹太主义儿童文学的经典。标题为Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid and keinem Jud bei seinem Eid![既不要相信绿荒原上的狐狸,也不要相信他的誓言!]1(Bauer 1936),这部作品由臭名昭著的纳粹宣传家和出版商Julius Streicher出版和发行,他是弗兰肯的元首,也是煽动性反犹太主义周刊Der Stürmer的制作人。在提供了斯特里彻、鲍尔及其文学合作的毒果的历史背景后,本文探讨了《特劳·凯内姆·福克斯》中的人物名字是如何被用来散布关于生活在德意志帝国的犹太人的错误信息并散播对他们的仇恨的。正如本文所示,鲍尔的童话故事利用了现实生活中法西斯主义受害者的名字,有效地模糊了成人和儿童读者的事实与虚构之间的界限。文章最后讨论了迫切需要对过去和现在的仇恨团体使用名字向新成员灌输思想的方式进行更多研究,无论大小。
{"title":"Nazis, Lies, and Lullabies","authors":"I. M. Nick","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2474","url":null,"abstract":"In 1936, Elvira Theodolinde Bauer, a German kindergarten teacher and would-be graphic artist, wrote and illustrated a picturebook that would eventually become a classic of anti-Semitic children’s literature. Entitled Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud bei seinem Eid! [Trust neither a fox on a green heath nor a yid upon his oath!]1 (Bauer 1936), the work was published and distributed by the infamous Nazi propagandist and publisher Julius Streicher—the Führer of Franken and the producer of the incendiary anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stürmer. After providing historical background on Streicher, Bauer, and the poisonous fruit of their literary collaboration, this article examines how character names in Trau keinem Fuchs were used to plant misinformation about and sow hatred against Jewish people living in the Reich. As this article also shows, by utilizing the names of real-life victims of Fascism, Bauer’s fairy tales effectively blurred the line between fact and fiction for adult and child readers alike. The article ends with a discussion of the urgent need for more research into the ways hate groups, past and present, use names to indoctrinate new members, both great and small.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46435772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For many of us, some of our earliest and fondest memories involve story-time, when we discovered tales that had the power to inspire, calm, or chill the spirit. Over the years, the exact details of those stories may fade from our memories. However, the names of the fictional characters and imaginary places they inhabited often survive. In the spring of 2021, the American Name Society issued a call for papers for a special issue of NAMES on children’s literature, names, and naming. Onomastic scholars and names enthusiasts were invited to submit paper proposals that explored names and naming in literature intended for children and/or adolescents.
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"I. M. Nick","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2470","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2470","url":null,"abstract":"For many of us, some of our earliest and fondest memories involve story-time, when we discovered tales that had the power to inspire, calm, or chill the spirit. Over the years, the exact details of those stories may fade from our memories. However, the names of the fictional characters and imaginary places they inhabited often survive. In the spring of 2021, the American Name Society issued a call for papers for a special issue of NAMES on children’s literature, names, and naming. Onomastic scholars and names enthusiasts were invited to submit paper proposals that explored names and naming in literature intended for children and/or adolescents.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48990340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"American Name Society Conference Call","authors":"I. M. Nick","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2472","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45373476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This special distinction is given to a new scholar whose work is judged by a panel of onomastic researchers to be of superior academic quality.
这种特殊的区别是给一个新学者,他的工作是由一个专门的研究小组判断为卓越的学术质量。
{"title":"Invitation to Apply for the American Name Society's Emerging Scholar Award","authors":"I. M. Nick","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2442","url":null,"abstract":"This special distinction is given to a new scholar whose work is judged by a panel of onomastic researchers to be of superior academic quality.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43925857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The ubiquitous image of the sprawling 19th century Southern plantation has meant that much of the research on US slave names has focused on regions below the mid-Atlantic (Desrochers 2002). The resulting lack of attention that has been given to other times and spaces has necessarily limited our collective understanding of slave naming patterns. The purpose of the current investigation is to help address this geo-temporal oversight. With that goal in mind, the present empirical study explores the naming patterns of fugitive slaves as advertised in newspapers published in New York and New Jersey between 1730 and 1790. Using the techniques of corpus linguistics, this investigation analyzed 147 runaway slave advertisements featuring 150 slave names. These onomastic exemplars comprised four name-types: first names, surnames, nicknames, and aliases. Onomastic patterns were identified using descriptive statistics as well chi-squared and Fisher’s exact tests. Special attention was paid to exploring the relationship between the runaways’ names and their reported age, gender, and racial classification. After a brief introduction to slavery in the New England colonies, this study presents the empirical results and compares them with previous findings on US slave names. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations and argues for more corpus-based research into slave names.
{"title":"In the Name of Freedom","authors":"I. M. Nick","doi":"10.5195/names.2022.2436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5195/names.2022.2436","url":null,"abstract":"The ubiquitous image of the sprawling 19th century Southern plantation has meant that much of the research on US slave names has focused on regions below the mid-Atlantic (Desrochers 2002). The resulting lack of attention that has been given to other times and spaces has necessarily limited our collective understanding of slave naming patterns. The purpose of the current investigation is to help address this geo-temporal oversight. With that goal in mind, the present empirical study explores the naming patterns of fugitive slaves as advertised in newspapers published in New York and New Jersey between 1730 and 1790. Using the techniques of corpus linguistics, this investigation analyzed 147 runaway slave advertisements featuring 150 slave names. These onomastic exemplars comprised four name-types: first names, surnames, nicknames, and aliases. Onomastic patterns were identified using descriptive statistics as well chi-squared and Fisher’s exact tests. Special attention was paid to exploring the relationship between the runaways’ names and their reported age, gender, and racial classification. After a brief introduction to slavery in the New England colonies, this study presents the empirical results and compares them with previous findings on US slave names. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations and argues for more corpus-based research into slave names.","PeriodicalId":44254,"journal":{"name":"Names-A Journal of Onomastics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48248930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}