The American Name Society's Annual Meeting (February 21, 2026) features a timely and crucial panel exploring how names function as sites of cultural negotiation, identity formation, and resistance in youth literature - particularly as book bans and censorship movements increasingly target diverse voices.
The Panel: Diversity in Youth Literature
Time: 3:30–5:00 PM Eastern US Time
Format: Virtual
Registration: https://bit.ly/3O7jeW7
This session brings together three scholars examining how young protagonists navigate identity through naming practices across different cultural contexts and power dynamics.
Three Papers, One Central Question: Who Gets to Name?
1. "My name is not 'Ivy-Liz,' it's 'Iveliz': Authors' Naming Practices and Negotiation of Space in Latinx Youth Literature"
Presenters: Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonzalez (Illinois State University) & Adriana De Persia Colón (Independent Researcher)
The title alone captures a fundamental struggle: the anglicization, mispronunciation, and systematic erasure of Latinx names in American spaces. When a teacher or classmate transforms "Iveliz" into "Ivy-Liz," they're not just making a pronunciation error - they're enacting a form of cultural violence that young readers recognize immediately.
Cintron-Gonzalez and De Persia Colón examine how contemporary Latinx authors for young readers handle this negotiation of space: How do protagonists assert their names against pressure to assimilate? What narrative strategies do authors use to center correct pronunciation and spelling? How do these naming practices create or resist belonging in predominantly Anglo educational and social environments?
This research speaks directly to the lived experience of millions of young Latinx readers who see their own naming struggles reflected - or erased - in the literature available to them.
2. "The Power of Naming: Identity and Immigration in Youth Literature"
Presenter: Sharon N. Obasi (University of Nebraska at Kearney)
Immigration narratives are fundamentally about transformation, and names sit at the intersection of that change. Obasi's paper explores how youth literature handles the complex identity negotiations immigrant children face: maintaining heritage through names while navigating new cultural contexts.
Do characters keep their birth names or adopt "American" ones? How do authors portray the emotional weight of these decisions? What messages do naming choices send young immigrant readers about assimilation versus cultural preservation?
Given current political debates around immigration and the censorship movements targeting books that feature immigrant experiences, this research addresses questions with real stakes for young readers trying to understand their place in American society.
3. "Support, Hope, and Strength Through Naming in Fiction for Young Readers: Young Protagonists Harnessing Names to Survive Powerlessness"
Presenter: Susan Behrens (Marymount Manhattan College)
Behrens' paper examines naming as a tool for survival and empowerment when young protagonists face situations where they lack other forms of agency. How do characters use names - choosing them, claiming them, refusing them—to assert selfhood in contexts of powerlessness?
This could encompass:
- Foster children naming themselves
- Characters escaping abuse by taking new identities
- Young people reclaiming names after trauma
- Protagonists using naming to create found families
The research highlights how authors give young readers models for using language and naming as sources of strength when material power is unavailable—a particularly crucial message for youth literature.
Why This Panel Matters Now
The panel description notes that "recent years have seen a blistering and sustained effort to severely limit the breadth and range of literature available to readers," with censorship movements "especially active in trying to control publications for underage readers."
Books featuring diverse names and naming practices - particularly those centering Latinx, immigrant, LGBTQ+, or otherwise marginalized identities - are disproportionately targeted for removal from school libraries and curricula. When The House on Mango Street, Inside Out and Back Again, The Poet X, or Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe face challenges, the attack often centers on the "unfamiliar" cultural contexts these names represent.
This panel implicitly argues: Names matter. Seeing your name - or names like yours - in literature matters. And efforts to remove these books are efforts to erase these identities from public acknowledgment.
The Bloomsbury Connection
The session description mentions that "Bloomsbury will soon release a new book in the onomastic series edited [by] NAMES Editor-in-Chief" (text appears cut off in the image). This suggests the panel may be connected to or previewing a forthcoming scholarly volume on names in literature, potentially expanding this conversation beyond the conference presentation.
Given Bloomsbury's academic reputation and the NAMES journal connection (published by the American Name Society), this indicates serious scholarly attention to youth literature onomastics - elevating these questions from niche children's literature studies to recognized onomastic research.
For Whom This Panel Speaks
Scholars and educators will find methodological approaches to analyzing naming in youth literature and pedagogical strategies for teaching diverse texts.
Authors and publishers gain insight into how naming practices function as identity markers and sites of resistance - potentially informing more thoughtful character naming.
Librarians and activists defending diverse books obtain scholarly backing for why these texts - and the names within them - matter for young readers' development and belonging.
Parents and caregivers navigating their own children's reading discover research validating why representation in names isn't trivial but foundational to identity formation.
Young readers themselves - if any attend virtually - hear academic validation that their struggles with name pronunciation, cultural negotiation, and identity formation through naming are worthy of serious scholarly attention.
The Broader Onomastic Questions
While focused on youth literature, this panel addresses questions central to onomastic study:
- How do naming practices reflect and reinforce power structures?
- What happens when names cross linguistic and cultural boundaries?
- How do individuals use names to negotiate belonging and resistance?
- What is lost when names are erased, anglicized, or "corrected"?
Youth literature provides particularly clear examples because young protagonists often lack other forms of power—making naming one of few tools available for self-assertion. The genre's focus on identity formation means names carry explicit thematic weight rather than functioning as mere labels.
Join the Conversation
The virtual format makes this panel accessible to anyone interested in the intersection of names, literature, and cultural politics. Whether you're a scholar, educator, author, librarian, or simply someone who cares about diverse representation in youth literature, this session offers timely research on how names function as sites of identity, resistance, and belonging.
In an era when saying certain names, reading certain books, and acknowledging certain identities have become politically contested, this panel reminds us: Names are never neutral. And youth literature that honors the full range of human naming practices does essential work.
Event Details:
Diversity in Youth Literature Panel
American Name Society Annual Meeting
February 21, 2026 | 3:30–5:00 PM EST | Virtual
Register: https://bit.ly/3O7jeW7
The American Name Society is the leading scholarly organization devoted to the study of names and naming practices across disciplines, publishing the journal NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics.
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