Mike Johnson: The Most Common Surname in the Room

 The second (after Mr. President Donald Trump) instalment of our onomastic series on the names of the most powerful people in the United States

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The man and his names

James Michael Johnson was born on 30 January 1972 in Shreveport, Louisiana, the eldest of four children of James Patrick "Pat" Johnson, a firefighter (1953-2016), and Jeanne Johnson. He goes by Mike - the informal hypocoristic of Michael - which is itself a subject worth a moment's attention. Michael derives from the Hebrew Mikhaʾel (מִיכָאֵל), meaning "Who is like God?" - a rhetorical question implying "no one," making it at once a name of divine humility and a name of the Archangel. The shortening to Mike follows the standard English pattern of clipping (as Bob from Robert, Bill from William, Ted from Edward), and it serves a specific social function: it signals accessibility, informality, and a certain all-American ordinariness that the full James Michael - or the still more formal Speaker Johnson - does not.

His full name James Michael is worth noting as a double-saint compound: James (from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, Jacob) and Michael (the Archangel), both dominant names in the Catholic and Protestant calendar tradition and both in the top 10 of American given-name frequency charts throughout the 20th century. The combination is unremarkable in the Louisiana Baptist culture he was raised in - but it does reflect the deep hagionymic substrate of American naming culture that we explored in the statistical sections of this blog.

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The surname Johnson: etymology and onomastic profile

Johnson is a patronymic surname of Anglo-Norman origin, derived from the Middle English given name Johan / Jo(h)n plus the suffix -son. It literally means "son of John."

The chain of derivation runs deep and far: Johnson ← Middle English John ← Latin Johannes ← Greek Iōannēs (Ἰωάννης) ← Hebrew Yôḥānān (יוֹחָנָן), meaning "Yahweh has favoured" or "God is gracious." The name therefore encodes, through seven or eight centuries of phonological evolution, a theological claim from the Hebrew Bible - a fact that sits interestingly against Johnson's own strongly evangelical public identity.

The earliest recorded use of Johnson as a surname - spelled Jonessone - appears in English records in 1287. The first recorded instance in the form approaching modern spelling was Robert filius Johannis ("Robert, son of John") in Lincolnshire records from 1208. The name rose in prominence during the 13th and 14th centuries as the given name John - already popular through its association with St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, and a long series of popes - began to dominate English baptismal registers. John was rivalling William as the most common English given name by the 13th century, which directly drove the high frequency of the patronymic Johnson.

The surname is geographically concentrated in the English Midlands and North - particularly in Cambridge, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Durham, Lancashire, Leicester, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Yorkshire - while being conspicuously rare in the southwestern counties of England. This northern bias reflects both the Scandinavian settlement pattern in the Danelaw and the fact that the -son suffix (as opposed to the Welsh/southwestern -s suffix, producing Jones) is characteristically northern English and lowland Scottish.

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Johnson in the American context: a demographically complex surname

This is where the onomastics becomes genuinely interesting for a blog about power and naming. Johnson is not simply an English patronymic transplanted to America - it is one of the most demographically layered surnames in the United States. According to the 2020 U.S. Census surname tables, approximately 2,130,885 Americans carry the last name Johnson, making it the second most common surname in the United States at a frequency of 621.69 per 100,000 people - roughly 1 in every 161 residents.

Among Census respondents with the surname Johnson in 2020, 56.8% identified as White, 33.6% as Black or African American, and 4.7% as two or more races. That one-third Black American share is not coincidental - it reflects the specific history of surname assignment in the antebellum South. After emancipation, many formerly enslaved people took the surname of their former enslaver, while others chose names that held personal meaning. Johnson, Williams, and Smith top the African-American surname list partly because of these patterns - many enslaved people carried these names and retained them after emancipation, while others chose them as an assertion of American identity.

This creates a remarkable onomastic paradox: Johnson is simultaneously one of the most Anglo-Saxon of English patronymics - a name rooted in northern English agricultural communities of the 13th century - and one of the most deeply African-American surnames in the United States, carrying within it the history of slavery, emancipation, and the long aftermath of both. The second most common surname in America is also the second most common surname among Black Americans. Mike Johnson, the white evangelical Republican Speaker from Louisiana, and a Black Baptist congregation member in Atlanta may share the same surname for entirely different historical reasons - one going back to an English ancestor named John, the other to a plantation in the antebellum South.

This is not a minor footnote. It is the central onomastic fact about the name Johnson in America.

In North America, the Johnson surname has also absorbed cognates from other languages: Norwegian and Danish Johnsen, Johannesen, Johannsen, and Jensen; Swedish Johnsson, Johansson, and Jonsson; Dutch Janssen; German Janz; Czech Jansa; and Slovenian Janša and Janežič. The Scandinavian contribution to the American Johnson pool is particularly significant - many Johnson families in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas descend from 19th-century Norwegian and Swedish immigrants whose names (Johansson, Johannessen) were anglicised to Johnson at immigration or in the next generation. This is another layer of the same Matthew-effect dynamic we identified in the hagionymic surname series: Johnson became so dominant as a surname category that it attracted cognates from multiple unrelated linguistic traditions, absorbing them all into a single English-language string.

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Mike Johnson's family genealogy: a surprising ethnic complexity

Here the research produces a finding that is genuinely unexpected and worth dwelling on for a moment.

On his paternal side, Mike Johnson's ancestry is English and Scottish - the standard background for a white Protestant surname Johnson from northwest Louisiana, consistent with the settlement history of that region. The Johnson paternal line presents a long historical itinerary from possible early English roots into colonial Virginia and then gradually westward across the American South. The earliest part of the line begins with Martin Johnson (c. 1640 - before 4 May 1703), associated with Surry County, Virginia, and married to Jone / Johney Creed. Their descendant William Johnson (c. 1662 - before 4 July 1710) also belongs to the Surry County context. From him the line continues more clearly through Moses Johnson (1696–1763) of Sussex County, Virginia, and then William Johnson (c. 1720–before 1776), still within the Virginia colonial world. In the 18th century, the family line is represented by James Johnson Sr. (1735–1784), followed by Elijah Phillip Johnson (1771–1850), whose generation marks the transition from Virginia toward the Carolinas. His son Alfred McDonald Johnson (1805–1871/1879) is connected with South Carolina, while the next generations show the continued westward movement of the family: Alford McDonald Johnson (1842–1923), Andrew Jackson Johnson (1871-1947), and Garner James Johnson (1891–1971). By the 20th century, the line had reached Louisiana, especially the Shreveport area, through Raymond Ralph Johnson (1930–2008) and his son James Patrick “Pat” Johnson (1953–2016). The modern representative of this paternal line is James Michael “Mike” Johnson (born 1972), born in Louisiana. In geographical terms, the family itinerary may therefore be summarized as: possible English roots → colonial Virginia → South Carolina → Arkansas → Louisiana. 

On his maternal side, however, the picture is notably more complex. Mike Johnson's maternal grandfather was Nunzio "Newt" Messina, born in Louisiana to Italian parents originally from Palermo, Sicily. Salvatore Nunzio "Sam" Messina, Johnson's great-grandfather, was the son of Giovanni Batista Messina and Maria Provenza. His great-great-grandmother Rosa Cicero was the daughter of Salvatore Cicero and Venera Maria Tumminello - all Sicilian names. This Sicilian heritage reflects a significant chapter in Italian-American history: Sicilian immigrants first arrived in Louisiana in the late 19th century to work in the sugarcane fields, establishing a vibrant community that continues to enrich the cultural fabric of the Gulf Coast.

The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) explicitly recognized this connection when congratulating Johnson on his re-election as Speaker, noting that he carries forward a proud Italian-American heritage through his maternal grandfather, a Sicilian immigrant - and that his election continued an unprecedented era of Italian-American representation in the Speakership, following Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

The maternal grandmother's line is different again: Rosa Andralene "Ann" Lester, Johnson's maternal grandmother, was born in Louisiana, the daughter of Andrew Lester (son of Thomas Marion Lester and Mary E. Hendricks) and Nannie N. Burt (daughter of Jarrett Thomas Burt and Elizabeth Janie Umphries) - an entirely Anglo-Saxon Louisiana lineage.

So Mike Johnson's actual ethnic ancestry, as documented in genealogical sources, combines: English/Scottish (paternal), Sicilian Italian (maternal grandfather), and Anglo-Saxon Louisianan (maternal grandmother). The entirely Anglo-Saxon surname Johnson masks this hybrid identity completely. This is exactly the function that assimilationist American naming conventions served throughout the 19th and 20th centuries: the dominant English patronymic absorbs everything else, rendering invisible the Sicilian great-grandparents from Palermo, the Norwegian immigrant grandfather anglicised at Ellis Island, or whoever else contributed to the biological reality the surname does not name.

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The given name Mike as a political instrument

One final onomastic observation worth making: the choice of Mike over Michael or James is not neutral. James would have carried historical presidential weight (six U.S. presidents bore the name), while Michael would have felt formal and slightly foreign to Louisiana evangelical culture. Mike is quintessentially the name of the working-class American male - the firefighter, the contractor, the guy next door. Johnson's father Patrick "Pat" Johnson was indeed a firefighter who was severely burned in the line of duty in 1984, killing a fellow firefighter and leaving Pat disabled. The Mike and Pat of this family are names that signal a specific American social register: unpretentious, hands-on, rooted in service. The Speaker's choice to be known as Mike Johnson rather than James Johnson or Michael Johnson is, from an onomastic perspective, a carefully consistent identity signal - whether consciously chosen or not.

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Key references:

• Britannica. Mike Johnson. britannica.com/biography/mike-johnson
• EthniCelebs. Mike Johnson — Genealogy. ethnicelebs.com/mike-johnson
• Forebears.io. Johnson surname origin. forebears.io/surnames/johnson
• Geneanet. Johnson last name origin. en.geneanet.org/surnames/JOHNSON
• Johnson, Mike. About - Speaker Mike Johnson. mikejohnson.house.gov/about
• NameCensus. Johnson surname popularity. namecensus.com/last-names/johnson-surname-popularity
• National Italian American Foundation (NIAF). NIAF congratulates Mike Johnson on re-election as Speaker. niaf.org, January 2025
• Wikipedia. Mike Johnson (Louisiana politician). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Johnson_(Louisiana_politician)
• Word, D.L. et al. (2008). Demographic aspects of surnames from Census 2000. U.S. Census Bureau
• Select Surnames. Johnson. selectsurnames.com/johnson

CfP: Special Issue of "Studies and Research in Onomastics and Lexicology"

 The journal Studii şi cercetări de onomastică şi lexicologie / Studies and Research in Onomastics and Lexicology (SCOL) announces a call for papers for a forthcoming special issue dedicated to the memory of Iulia Mărgărit, a distinguished scholar of Romanian linguistics.

The issue, entitled “In memoriam Iulia Mărgărit,” will honour her important scholarly contribution to the study of dialectal vocabulary, onomastics, and etymology. The editors invite original articles that continue and develop research in areas closely connected with her academic work.

The special issue aims to bring together studies focusing primarily on onomastics, toponymy, and dialectal lexicology, approached from synchronic, diachronic, dialectological, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– the formation, structure, and evolution of proper names;
– toponymy, toponymic stratification, and microtoponymy;
– relationships between names, space, memory, and identity;
– Romanian dialectal vocabulary, diatopic variation, and lexical areas;
– processes of lexical preservation, innovation, and circulation;
– language contact and dialectal etymology;
– research based on linguistic atlases, fieldwork, dialect archives, dictionaries, digital corpora, and other relevant documentary sources.

Original articles should be submitted by:

1 September 2026

Submissions should be sent to:

manuela.nevaci@unibuc.ro

All manuscripts will undergo the journal’s established double-blind peer-review procedure.

Second Call for Papers: ICOS Congress 2027 in Vienna

 Dear colleagues and friends,

The Organizing Committee of the 27th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences - ICOS 2027 warmly invites scholars to submit paper abstracts for the upcoming congress in Vienna.

Paper proposals should be submitted through the official congress website:

https://icos27-vienna.at/

Please click the button “Submit paper” on the website, or go directly to the submission page:

https://express.converia.de/frontend/index.php?page_id=53040

There you will find all necessary instructions for preparing and submitting your proposal.

Please note that papers do not have to be assigned only to the sessions that have already been proposed. Contributions may also address any other onomastic topic not yet covered by the existing session list. Such proposals will be arranged into new sessions by the Organizing Committee.

The deadline for paper submissions is:

31 October 2026

The ICOS Congress 2027 will offer an important international platform for presenting current research in all areas of name studies, including personal names, place names, literary names, commercial names, digital onomastics, socio-onomastics, historical onomastics, and other related fields.

Researchers, doctoral students, and all colleagues working in onomastics are warmly encouraged to submit their abstracts and participate in this major scholarly event.

With kind regards,
The ICOS 2027 Organizing Committee

What Place Names Reveal About Germany’s Settlement History

 Place names are much more than labels on a map. Their elements and endings preserve traces of earlier language areas, landscapes, and patterns of settlement. The endings -ing, -ingen, and -bach are particularly revealing because their present-day distribution reflects different phases in the settlement history of Germany.

🏘️ The endings -ing and -ingen belong to the oldest types of German settlement names. They developed mainly during the period of Germanic settlement from the fourth century onward and frequently referred to the founder or leader of a community.

Their original meaning can be paraphrased as:

“among the people of …” or “at the settlement of the followers of …”

Thus, Sigmaringen originally meant approximately “among the people of Sigmar.”

🗺️ Their geographical distribution reveals a clear linguistic contrast:

• -ingen is especially common in southwestern Germany.
• -ing is concentrated mainly in the Bavarian-speaking region.

These endings therefore reflect an early period in which settlements were often named after groups of people or their leaders.

Around 1,200 years ago, however, naming practices increasingly began to change. New settlements were more often named not after individuals, but after features of the surrounding landscape. Streams became particularly important in this process.

💧 A stream supplied drinking water, provided water for animals, powered mills, and helped communities develop new land. Many settlements were therefore founded directly beside a watercourse and eventually adopted its name. In this way, -bach, meaning “stream” or “brook,” became one of the most frequent place-name endings in Germany.

⛰️ The corresponding map shows that names ending in -bach are especially common in the upland and low-mountain regions of southern Germany. In these areas, new land was often settled outward from valleys and stream courses. A stream was therefore not merely a geographical feature; it was frequently the starting point of a new settlement.

In the North German Plain, by contrast, names ending in -bach are rare. The Low German equivalents -beck and -bek are more common there.

Taken together, the two maps illustrate a fundamental change in place-name formation:

Older names ending in -ing and -ingen often refer to people and social groups, whereas later names ending in -bach place greater emphasis on landscape and natural resources.

Place names therefore continue to make historical language regions, phases of settlement, and different ways of interpreting the landscape visible today.

💬 What is your favourite place ending in -ing, -ingen, or -bach?

Was Ortsnamen über Deutschlands Siedlungsgeschichte erzählen

Ortsnamen sind weit mehr als bloße Bezeichnungen auf einer Karte. Ihre Bestandteile und Endungen bewahren Spuren früherer Sprachräume, Landschaftsformen und Siedlungsbewegungen. Besonders aufschlussreich sind die Endungen -ing, -ingen und -bach, deren heutige Verteilung unterschiedliche Phasen der deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte sichtbar macht.

🏘️ Die Endungen -ing und -ingen gehören zu den ältesten deutschen Siedlungsnamensformen. Sie entstanden überwiegend während der germanischen Landnahmezeit ab dem vierten Jahrhundert und bezogen sich häufig auf den Gründer oder Anführer einer Gemeinschaft.

Ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung lässt sich ungefähr wiedergeben als:

„bei den Leuten des …“ oder „bei den Angehörigen von …“

So bedeutete Sigmaringen ursprünglich etwa „bei den Leuten des Sigmar“.

🗺️ Die räumliche Verteilung zeigt dabei einen deutlichen sprachgeografischen Unterschied:

• -ingen konzentriert sich besonders im Südwesten Deutschlands.
• -ing ist vor allem im bairischen Sprachraum verbreitet.

Diese Endungen erzählen somit von einer älteren Phase der Besiedlung, in der neue Orte häufig nach Personengruppen oder ihren Anführern benannt wurden.

Rund 1.200 Jahre vor unserer Zeit veränderte sich die Namengebung jedoch zunehmend. Neue Siedlungen wurden nun häufiger nicht mehr nach Personen, sondern nach den Merkmalen der Landschaft benannt. Besonders wichtig waren dabei Bäche.

💧 Ein Bach lieferte Trinkwasser, versorgte Tiere, trieb Mühlen an und erleichterte die Erschließung neuer Gebiete. Viele Siedlungen entstanden deshalb unmittelbar an einem Wasserlauf und übernahmen dessen Namen. So wurde -bach zu einer der häufigsten Ortsnamenendungen Deutschlands.

⛰️ Die entsprechende Karte zeigt, dass Ortsnamen auf -bach besonders im süddeutschen Mittelgebirgsraum verbreitet sind. Dort wurden neue Siedlungsflächen häufig von Tälern und Bachläufen aus erschlossen. Der Bach war also nicht nur ein landschaftliches Merkmal, sondern oft der Ausgangspunkt einer Siedlungsgründung.

Im norddeutschen Tiefland ist -bach dagegen selten. Dort finden sich häufiger die niederdeutschen Formen -beck und -bek.

Zusammengenommen zeigen die beiden Karten einen grundlegenden Wandel der Ortsnamengebung:

Ältere Namen auf -ing und -ingen verweisen häufig auf Menschen und soziale Gruppen, während jüngere Namen auf -bach stärker die Landschaft und natürliche Ressourcen in den Mittelpunkt stellen.

Ortsnamen machen damit historische Sprachräume, Besiedlungsphasen und unterschiedliche Formen der Wahrnehmung von Landschaft bis heute sichtbar.

💬 Welcher Ort mit -ing, -ingen oder -bach ist euer Lieblingsort?

Français

Ce que les noms de lieux révèlent sur l’histoire du peuplement allemand

Les noms de lieux sont bien plus que de simples indications sur une carte. Leurs éléments et leurs terminaisons conservent les traces d’anciens espaces linguistiques, de différents paysages et de mouvements de peuplement. Les terminaisons -ing, -ingen et -bach sont particulièrement instructives, car leur répartition actuelle reflète plusieurs phases de l’histoire du peuplement de l’Allemagne.

🏘️ Les terminaisons -ing et -ingen appartiennent aux types les plus anciens de noms de localités germaniques. Elles se sont surtout développées au cours de la période de colonisation germanique, à partir du IVe siècle, et renvoyaient souvent au fondateur ou au chef d’une communauté.

Leur sens originel peut être rendu approximativement par :

« chez les gens de… » ou « auprès des membres du groupe de… »

Ainsi, Sigmaringen signifiait à l’origine quelque chose comme « chez les gens de Sigmar ».

🗺️ Leur répartition géographique révèle une nette différence linguistique :

• -ingen est particulièrement fréquent dans le sud-ouest de l’Allemagne.
• -ing est surtout répandu dans l’espace linguistique bavarois.

Ces terminaisons témoignent donc d’une ancienne phase de peuplement au cours de laquelle les localités étaient souvent nommées d’après des groupes humains ou leurs dirigeants.

Il y a environ 1 200 ans, les pratiques de dénomination commencèrent toutefois à évoluer. Les nouvelles implantations furent de plus en plus souvent nommées non plus d’après des personnes, mais d’après les caractéristiques du paysage. Les ruisseaux jouèrent alors un rôle essentiel.

💧 Un ruisseau fournissait de l’eau potable, abreuvait les animaux, actionnait les moulins et facilitait la mise en valeur de nouveaux territoires. De nombreuses localités furent donc fondées directement le long d’un cours d’eau et finirent par en adopter le nom. C’est ainsi que -bach, qui signifie « ruisseau », devint l’un des éléments les plus fréquents dans les noms de lieux allemands.

⛰️ La carte correspondante montre que les noms en -bach sont particulièrement fréquents dans les régions de moyenne montagne du sud de l’Allemagne. Dans ces territoires, les nouvelles terres furent souvent peuplées à partir des vallées et des cours d’eau. Le ruisseau n’était donc pas seulement un élément du paysage : il constituait fréquemment le point de départ d’une implantation.

Dans la plaine d’Allemagne du Nord, en revanche, les noms en -bach sont rares. On y trouve plus souvent les formes bas-allemandes -beck et -bek.

Ensemble, les deux cartes illustrent une transformation fondamentale de la formation des noms de lieux :

Les noms plus anciens en -ing et -ingen renvoient souvent à des personnes ou à des groupes sociaux, tandis que les noms plus récents en -bach mettent davantage l’accent sur le paysage et les ressources naturelles.

Les noms de lieux rendent ainsi encore visibles aujourd’hui les anciens espaces linguistiques, les différentes phases du peuplement et les manières diverses de percevoir le paysage.

💬 Quel est votre lieu préféré dont le nom se termine par -ing, -ingen ou -bach ?

Proud of My Students: 1st State Prize and 3rd Federal Prize in the Foreign Languages Competition

 I am very proud to share that my students at FES Lahr have received two major awards this academic year. They won the first state prize in the Federal Foreign Languages Competition in Baden-Württemberg, which qualified them for Sprachenfest 2026, the national final of the competition in Dachau and Munich. There, they competed against the best language teams from across Germany and from German schools abroad, and were awarded a third federal prize.

The students were recognized for their trilingual film “Time Switch: Une leçon à travers les siècles.” In the film, a class from Lahr finds a mysterious mobile phone and accidentally travels through different periods of time: first to the year 1826, then to Roman antiquity, and finally to a dark future in 2226. Along the way, the students discover how strict, unfair, or even dangerous school could be in the past - and how frightening a technologized future without freedom, privacy, and real multilingualism might become.

As their supervising teacher, what makes me proudest is not only the award itself, but the commitment, creativity, and teamwork behind it. The students developed ideas together, learned texts in several languages, worked on pronunciation and acting, created scenes and costumes, and connected language learning with media, history, humor, and social reflection. To see this work honored first at state level and then at federal level is a wonderful recognition of their effort.

Fier de mes étudiants : 1er prix régional et 3me prix fédéral au Concours des langues étrangères

Je suis très fier de partager que mes élèves de 10e année de la Freie Evangelische Schule Lahr ont reçu cette année une double distinction. Ils ont remporté le premier prix régional du Concours fédéral des langues étrangères en Bade-Wurtemberg, ce qui leur a permis de se qualifier pour le Sprachenfest 2026, la finale nationale du concours à Dachau et Munich. Ils y ont affronté les meilleures équipes linguistiques d’Allemagne ainsi que des écoles allemandes à l’étranger, et ont obtenu un troisième prix fédéral.

Leur projet primé est un film trilingue intitulé « Time Switch: Une leçon à travers les siècles ». Dans ce film, une classe de Lahr trouve un téléphone portable mystérieux et voyage accidentellement à travers différentes époques : d’abord en 1826, puis dans l’Antiquité romaine, et enfin dans un avenir sombre en 2226. Les élèves découvrent ainsi à quel point l’école pouvait autrefois être stricte, injuste ou même dangereuse, et combien un futur technicisé, sans liberté, sans vie privée et sans véritable plurilinguisme, pourrait être inquiétant.

En tant que professeur accompagnateur, ce qui me rend particulièrement fier, ce n’est pas seulement le prix, mais l’engagement, la créativité et l’esprit d’équipe des élèves. Ils ont élaboré ensemble leurs idées, appris des textes en plusieurs langues, travaillé la prononciation et le jeu théâtral, créé des scènes et des costumes, et transformé l’apprentissage des langues en une expérience vivante. Voir ce travail récompensé d’abord au niveau régional, puis au niveau fédéral, est une magnifique reconnaissance de leur investissement.

Stolz auf meine Schüler: 1er Landespreis und 3er Bundespreis beim Fremdsprachenwettbewerb

Ich bin sehr stolz, teilen zu dürfen, dass meine Schülerinnen und Schüler der G10 der Freien Evangelischen Schule Lahr in diesem Schuljahr gleich doppelt ausgezeichnet wurden: Sie erhielten den ersten Landespreis beim Bundeswettbewerb Fremdsprachen in Baden-Württemberg und qualifizierten sich damit für das Sprachenfest 2026, das Bundesfinale des Wettbewerbs in Dachau und München. Dort traten sie gegen die besten Sprachenteams aus ganz Deutschland sowie von deutschen Auslandsschulen an und wurden zusätzlich mit einem dritten Bundespreis ausgezeichnet.

Ausgezeichnet wurde unser dreisprachiger Film „Time Switch: Une leçon à travers les siècles“, in dem eine Klasse aus Lahr ein geheimnisvolles Handy findet und versehentlich durch verschiedene Zeiten reist: zuerst ins Jahr 1826, dann in die römische Antike und schließlich in eine düstere Zukunft des Jahres 2226. Dabei erleben die Jugendlichen, wie streng, ungerecht oder gefährlich Schule früher sein konnte und wie beängstigend eine technisierte Zukunft ohne Freiheit, Privatsphäre und echte Mehrsprachigkeit wäre.

Für mich als betreuenden Lehrer war das Wichtigste nicht allein der Preis, sondern zu sehen, mit welcher Kreativität, Verantwortung und Begeisterung die Schülerinnen und Schüler gearbeitet haben. Sie entwickelten gemeinsam Ideen, lernten Texte in verschiedenen Sprachen, arbeiteten an Aussprache und Schauspiel, gestalteten Szenen, Kostüme und Medienarbeit - und machten Sprache dadurch lebendig. Dass diese Arbeit zuerst auf Landesebene und anschließend sogar auf Bundesebene ausgezeichnet wurde, ist eine wunderbare Anerkennung ihres Einsatzes. 

Я горжусь своими студентами: первое место в земле Баден-Вюртемберг и третье место по всей Германии на Олимпиаде иностранных языков

Я с большой гордостью хочу поделиться тем, что мои ученики 10 класса Freie Evangelische Schule Lahr в этом учебном году получили сразу две важные награды. Они завоевали первую земельную премию на Федеральном конкурсе иностранных языков в Баден-Вюртемберге, благодаря чему прошли в Sprachenfest 2026, федеральный финал конкурса в Дахау и Мюнхене. Там они соревновались с лучшими языковыми командами со всей Германии, а также с немецкими школами за рубежом, и получили третью федеральную премию.

Награду получил их трёхъязычный фильм «Time Switch: Une leçon à travers les siècles». В фильме класс из Лара находит загадочный мобильный телефон и случайно путешествует по разным эпохам: сначала в 1826 год, затем в римскую античность и, наконец, в мрачное будущее 2226 года. Во время этих путешествий ученики узнают, насколько строгой, несправедливой или даже опасной могла быть школа в прошлом, и насколько пугающим может быть технологизированное будущее без свободы, частной жизни и настоящего многоязычия.

Как учитель, сопровождавший этот проект, я особенно горжусь не только самой наградой, но и тем, с какой ответственностью, творчеством и увлечением работали ученики. Они вместе разрабатывали идеи, учили тексты на разных языках, работали над произношением и актёрской игрой, создавали сцены и костюмы, соединяя изучение языков с историей, юмором, медиа и размышлениями о будущем. То, что эта работа была отмечена сначала на земельном, а затем и на федеральном уровне, - прекрасное признание их труда. 

De discipulis meis gloriari possum: praemium regionale et praemium foederale in Certamine Linguarum Exterarum

Magno gaudio et superbia nuntio discipulos meos classis decimae Scholae FES Lahr hoc anno duplici honore ornatos esse. Primum praemium regionale in Certamine Foederali Linguarum Exterarum in Badenia-Virtembergia acceperunt atque ita ad Festum Linguarum anni 2026, certamen finale foederale Dacoviae et Monachii, admissi sunt. Ibi cum optimis gregibus linguisticis totius Germaniae necnon scholarum Germanicarum transmarinarum certaverunt et tertium praemium foederale consecuti sunt.

Praemio affecta est pellicula trilinguis “Time Switch: Une leçon à travers les siècles.” In hac pellicula classis Lahrae telephonum mobile mysteriosum invenit atque casu per diversa tempora iter facit: primum ad annum 1826, deinde in antiquitatem Romanam, postremo in futurum obscurum anni 2226. Discipuli discipulaeque ibi experiuntur quam severa, iniusta vel etiam periculosa olim schola esse potuerit, atque quam terribile futurum technicis rebus dominatum esse possit, si libertas, vita privata et vera multilinguitas paene evanescant.

Ut magister huius operis curator, maxime gaudeo non solum de praemiis, sed etiam de studio, inventione et communi labore discipulorum. Ipsi consilia excogitaverunt, textus variis linguis didicerunt, pronuntiationem et artem agendi exercuerunt, scaenas et vestes paraverunt atque linguas vivas in opere creativo fecerunt. Quod hic labor primum in regione, deinde etiam in toto foedere agnitus est, praeclara aestimatio laboris eorum est.

Noms 25 (2026): A Catalan Onomastic Window onto Toponymy, Anthroponymy, Literature, and Fieldwork

 The new issue of Noms: Revista de la Societat d’Onomàstica, no. 25 / 2026, offers a rich panorama of current Catalan and wider Romance onomastic activity. The journal presents itself as a dissemination magazine of the Societat d’Onomàstica, open to contributions on theory, methodology, fieldwork, reviews, bibliographical news, archival materials, and images of onomastic value. The issue is edited by Rosa Maria Anglès, Andreu Beltran, Jesús Bernat, Assumpció Rehues, and Sílvia Veà, with Jesús Bernat and Assumpció Rehues as coordinators. Its cover photograph, by Jesús Bernat, shows the Pic dels Llacs from the Coll de la Botella in Andorra, already signalling one of the issue’s central motifs: mountain toponymy.

The opening “Presentació” [“Presentation”], by Jesús Bernat and Assumpció Rehues, situates the issue in the context of the 51st Colloquium of the Societat d’Onomàstica, held in Encamp, Andorra, from 8 to 10 May 2026. The colloquium’s initial theme was “Toponímia i antroponímia pirinenca, relleu positiu i hidronímia” [“Pyrenean Toponymy and Anthroponymy, Positive Relief and Hydronymy”]. The editors emphasize not only the thematic diversity of the meeting, but also its dialectal and geographical breadth, ranging across the Catalan-speaking lands.

The issue includes a long “Notícies” [“News”] section that functions almost as an onomastic chronicle of the first half of 2026. It gathers press items and announcements on street naming, official toponymy, Catalan Sign Language toponymy, surname history, meteorological naming, contested place-name forms, and the politics of public names in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Andorra, Galicia, the Basque Country, Asturias, Aragon, and beyond. This makes the issue especially useful not only as a scholarly resource but also as a record of living public debates around names.

The bibliographical section, “Novetats bibliogràfiques” [“Bibliographical News”], is particularly valuable. It lists recent books, articles, journals, and maps relevant to onomastics, ranging from Catalan and Occitan toponymy to Galician, Basque, Arabic, literary, genealogical, and international naming studies. Among the books highlighted are works on Toponímia i antroponímia en terres de cruïlla [“Toponymy and Anthroponymy in Crossroads Lands”], Estudis de toponímia catalana i occitana [“Studies in Catalan and Occitan Toponymy”], La memòria d’un paisatge: la toponímia de Fageca [“The Memory of a Landscape: The Toponymy of Fageca”], and numerous other regional and comparative contributions.

The review section contains four main reviews. Ferran Guardiola Noguera reviews the edited volume by Albert Aragonès Salvat, Carles M. Castellà Espuny, and Andreu Subirats Aleixandri, Toponímia i antroponímia en terres de cruïlla. Qüestions d’onomàstica en el subdialecte tortosí [“Toponymy and Anthroponymy in Crossroads Lands: Questions of Onomastics in the Tortosí Subdialect”]. The review presents the volume as the outcome of the Tortosa onomastic meetings and highlights its work on river culture, the Ebro Delta, augmentative suffixes in toponymy, local street-name practices, and historical place-name material.

Eugeni Perea Simón reviews Jordi Manent i Tomàs, Els noms populars dels nivolats, boires i vents de Menorca [“The Popular Names of Cloud Formations, Fogs and Winds of Menorca”]. This review is one of the most evocative pieces in the issue. It presents Manent’s work as a major contribution to popular meteorological onomastics, noting its 261 entries for clouds and fogs and 56 for winds, many of them absent from the DCVB. The review frames this lexical material as fragile intangible heritage, where local names preserve environmental knowledge, agriculture, fishing culture, religion, and popular imagination.

Joan Bell-lloc reviews Robert Pocklington’s edited volume Pautas para el estudio de la toponimia árabe hispánica [“Guidelines for the Study of Hispanic Arabic Toponymy”]. The review emphasizes the methodological importance of the book: Pocklington builds a large corpus of Latin and Arabic etyma and proposes both “positive” and “inverse” paths for reconstructing the evolution of Hispano-Arabic and Romance place names. This is presented as a major tool for researchers dealing with the often difficult phonetic and graphic transmission of Arabic and Arabized Hispanic toponyms.

Rosa M. Anglès reviews a set of works by Jaume Ventura Nualart, including Noms de les cases del nostre poble [“Names of the Houses of Our Village”] and the multi-volume photographic series Temps era temps [“Once Upon a Time”], devoted to Palau-solità i Plegamans. The review stresses the onomastic value of photographic and local-history collections: even when they are not conceived as strict onomastic monographs, they preserve house names, surnames, nicknames, local place names, and the social memory of a municipality transformed by demographic and urban change.

The literary section, “Onomàstica i literatura” [“Onomastics and Literature”], offers a passage from Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas, Matèria de Bretanya [“Matter of Brittany”]. The excerpt is a beautiful example of literary toponymy: la Punta de l’Albir, el Morro de Toix, l’Olla, la Illeta, l’Illot, l’Aitana, el Puigcampana, Bèrnia, el Coll del Mascarat, and la Vall de Tàrbena become part of a poetic geography where names structure landscape, memory, and affect.

The issue’s research articles are varied but strongly connected by historical-toponymic method. Cosme Aguiló, in “Rectificacions sobre un topònim tunisenc de la cartografia antiga” [“Corrections concerning a Tunisian Toponym in Ancient Cartography”], revisits an earlier interpretation from his own work on Bartomeu Olives’ atlas. By comparing medieval nautical charts, he corrects the reading and interpretation of a Tunisian maritime toponym, arguing that forms such as due seror / doe soror / doe solor point to “two sisters,” later obscured and replaced or paralleled by masculine forms such as frares.

Ventura Castellvell, in “Puigtinyós (Alt Camp) i Puègtinhós (Aude)” [“Puigtinyós (Alt Camp) and Puègtinhós (Aude)”], compares a Catalan and an Occitan toponym formed with puig / puèg plus an adjective related to tinyós / tinhós. The article explains the 1917 replacement of the village name Puigtinyós by Montferri, motivated by the negative social associations of tinyós, while also showing that the adjective could originally have had an orographic or descriptive meaning connected with rocky, reddish, or vegetation-marked terrain.

Jordi Mir contributes “Pau Vila, un estel en el record” [“Pau Vila, a Star in Memory”], a memorial essay rather than a conventional research article. It recalls the geographer Pau Vila through the author’s personal memory of excursionist culture, the continuity of Catalan geography, and a remarkable 1976 outing to the Montseny. Its onomastic value lies in the way personal memory, landscape names, mountain culture, and national geography are interwoven.

Finally, Plàcid Pérez Pastor and Jaume Deyà Miró publish “Toponímia de la Serra de Tramuntana de Mallorca: del districte andalusí d’al-Yībal al terme de les Muntanyes (1)” [“Toponymy of the Serra de Tramuntana of Mallorca: from the Andalusi District of al-Yībal to the District of the Mountains (1)”]. This substantial article combines historical documentation, Arabic and Romance toponymy, archaeology, and territorial reconstruction. It examines names such as Turixant, Almallutx, Cúber, Bini, Lofra, and others, showing how the Islamic and feudal layers of Mallorca’s mountain landscape can be reconstructed through toponymy.

A final visual section presents the 51st Colloquium of the Societat d’Onomàstica in Encamp through photographs by Jesús Bernat Agut and Llorenç Roviras Sampere. The map and photo report list nineteen communications, including work by Xavier Planas, Albert Pujal, Joan Peytaví, Carlos Ángel Rizos, Josep Maria Vigo, Victor Sabaté, Josep Canals, Jesús Burgueño, Ferran Lozano, Agustí López, Carles Gascón, Joan Tort, Quim Valera, Carlos Fernández, Enric Ribes, Joan Camps, Josep M. Bertran, Martí Huguet, Rosa M. Anglès, Ernestina Vallverdú, Josep Quer, Jesús Bernat, Ferran Guardiola, Victor Agulló, Dayana Arteta, Ricard Sentandreu, Fèlix Bruguera, Albert Turull, and Emili Casanova.

Academically, Noms 25 is not a narrowly specialized journal issue in the conventional research-article sense. It is closer to a living bulletin of onomastic culture: news, bibliography, reviews, literary illustration, research notes, local history, and colloquium documentation coexist. This mixed format is also its strength. It shows onomastics not as an isolated academic discipline, but as a field connecting archives, oral tradition, maps, meteorology, mountain knowledge, local politics, literature, and memory. One small point of caution is that some sections are necessarily heterogeneous: bibliographical lists, reviews, and research articles are not separated by the same degree of scholarly apparatus. But for a society magazine devoted to dissemination, this is not a weakness; it is part of the genre. The issue’s deeper unity lies in its persistent concern with names as cultural evidence.

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en català

Noms 25 (2026): una finestra onomàstica sobre la toponímia, l’antroponímia, la literatura i el treball de camp

El número 25 / 2026 de Noms: Revista de la Societat d’Onomàstica ofereix una panoràmica molt rica de l’activitat onomàstica actual, sobretot en l’àmbit català i romànic. La revista es presenta com una publicació de divulgació de la Societat d’Onomàstica, oberta a aportacions sobre teoria, metodologia, treball de camp, ressenyes, novetats bibliogràfiques, documents d’arxiu i imatges amb valor onomàstic. L’equip de redacció és format per Rosa Maria Anglès, Andreu Beltran, Jesús Bernat, Assumpció Rehues i Sílvia Veà, amb Jesús Bernat i Assumpció Rehues com a coordinadors. La fotografia de portada, obra de Jesús Bernat, mostra el pic dels Llacs des del coll de la Botella, a Andorra, i anticipa un dels grans eixos del número: la toponímia de muntanya.

La “Presentació” [“Presentation”], signada per Jesús Bernat i Assumpció Rehues, situa el número en el marc del 51è Col·loqui de la Societat d’Onomàstica, celebrat a Encamp, Andorra, els dies 8, 9 i 10 de maig de 2026. L’eix inicial del col·loqui fou “Toponímia i antroponímia pirinenca, relleu positiu i hidronímia” [“Pyrenean Toponymy and Anthroponymy, Positive Relief and Hydronymy”]. Els coordinadors remarquen tant la diversitat temàtica com la diversitat dialectal i geogràfica de les intervencions.

La secció “Notícies” [“News”] és gairebé una crònica onomàstica del primer semestre de 2026. Hi trobem notícies sobre nomenclàtors urbans, toponímia oficial, toponímia en llengua de signes catalana, història dels cognoms, noms de borrasques, polèmiques sobre la castellanització de topònims, canvis de noms de carrers i debats públics sobre la memòria inscrita en l’espai. La revista mostra així que l’onomàstica no és només una disciplina erudita, sinó també un camp viu de política lingüística, patrimoni i vida quotidiana.

La secció “Novetats bibliogràfiques” [“Bibliographical News”] és una eina de gran utilitat per als investigadors. Recull llibres, articles, revistes i mapes relacionats amb l’onomàstica catalana, occitana, gallega, basca, àrab, literària, genealògica i internacional. Entre les obres destacades hi ha Toponímia i antroponímia en terres de cruïlla [“Toponymy and Anthroponymy in Crossroads Lands”], Estudis de toponímia catalana i occitana [“Studies in Catalan and Occitan Toponymy”], La memòria d’un paisatge: la toponímia de Fageca [“The Memory of a Landscape: The Toponymy of Fageca”], i moltes altres aportacions territorials i comparatives.

La secció de “Ressenyes” [“Reviews”] inclou quatre ressenyes principals. Ferran Guardiola Noguera ressenya el volum editat per Albert Aragonès Salvat, Carles M. Castellà Espuny i Andreu Subirats Aleixandri, Toponímia i antroponímia en terres de cruïlla. Qüestions d’onomàstica en el subdialecte tortosí [“Toponymy and Anthroponymy in Crossroads Lands: Questions of Onomastics in the Tortosí Subdialect”]. La ressenya presenta el volum com a resultat de les Jornades d’Onomàstica de Tortosa i en destaca l’interès per la cultura fluvial, el delta de l’Ebre, els augmentatius toponímics, la retolació urbana i la documentació històrica.

Eugeni Perea Simón ressenya l’obra de Jordi Manent i Tomàs, Els noms populars dels nivolats, boires i vents de Menorca [“The Popular Names of Cloud Formations, Fogs and Winds of Menorca”]. La ressenya subratlla el valor d’aquest recull de nefonímia i meteorologia popular, amb 261 entrades de noms de núvols i boires i 56 de vents, moltes de les quals no apareixen al DCVB. L’obra és presentada com una aportació a la preservació d’un patrimoni immaterial especialment fràgil: els noms amb què pagesos, pescadors i habitants de Menorca han llegit el cel i el temps.

Joan Bell-lloc ressenya el volum editat per Robert Pocklington, Pautas para el estudio de la toponimia árabe hispánica [“Guidelines for the Study of Hispanic Arabic Toponymy”]. La ressenya posa l’accent en la dimensió metodològica de l’obra: Pocklington parteix d’un corpus ampli d’ètims llatins i àrabs i proposa una doble via d’anàlisi, l’evolució positiva i l’evolució inversa, per estudiar la transformació dels topònims àrabs, arabitzats i romànics de la península Ibèrica.

Rosa M. Anglès ressenya diverses obres de Jaume Ventura Nualart, entre les quals Noms de les cases del nostre poble [“Names of the Houses of Our Village”] i la sèrie fotogràfica Temps era temps [“Once Upon a Time”], centrades en Palau-solità i Plegamans. La ressenya mostra com aquests llibres, tot i no ser monografies onomàstiques estrictes, conserven una gran quantitat de noms de casa, cognoms, renoms, topònims locals i memòria social d’un municipi transformat pel creixement demogràfic i urbanístic.

La secció “Onomàstica i literatura” [“Onomastics and Literature”] recull un fragment de Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas, Matèria de Bretanya [“Matter of Brittany”]. El text és un exemple magnífic de toponímia literària: la Punta de l’Albir, el Morro de Toix, l’Olla, la Illeta, l’Illot, l’Aitana, el Puigcampana, Bèrnia, el Coll del Mascarat i la Vall de Tàrbena no són simples referències geogràfiques, sinó una manera de construir memòria, paisatge i identitat.

Els articles del número ofereixen una mostra variada de metodologia toponímica. Cosme Aguiló, a “Rectificacions sobre un topònim tunisenc de la cartografia antiga” [“Corrections concerning a Tunisian Toponym in Ancient Cartography”], revisa una interpretació anterior pròpia a partir de cartes nàutiques medievals. L’autor mostra com les formes due seror / doe soror / doe solor apunten probablement a la idea de “dues germanes”, després opacitzada i transformada en formes masculines com frares.

Ventura Castellvell, a “Puigtinyós (Alt Camp) i Puègtinhós (Aude)” [“Puigtinyós (Alt Camp) and Puègtinhós (Aude)”], compara un topònim català i un d’occità formats amb puig / puèg i un adjectiu relacionat amb tinyós / tinhós. L’article explica el canvi oficial de Puigtinyós a Montferri l’any 1917, provocat per les connotacions negatives de tinyós, però també mostra que l’adjectiu podia tenir un valor descriptiu orogràfic, relacionat amb clapes rocoses, colors ferruginosos o vegetació rogenca.

Jordi Mir, a “Pau Vila, un estel en el record” [“Pau Vila, a Star in Memory”], ofereix un text memorialístic dedicat al geògraf Pau Vila. L’article combina memòria personal, excursionisme, geografia catalana i noms de lloc, especialment a partir d’una excursió al Montseny l’any 1976. És una peça menys analítica en sentit estricte, però molt significativa per entendre com el coneixement del territori es transmet també a través de la conversa, l’excursió i la memòria dels mestres.

Finalment, Plàcid Pérez Pastor i Jaume Deyà Miró publiquen “Toponímia de la Serra de Tramuntana de Mallorca: del districte andalusí d’al-Yībal al terme de les Muntanyes (1)” [“Toponymy of the Serra de Tramuntana of Mallorca: from the Andalusi District of al-Yībal to the District of the Mountains (1)”]. L’article combina documentació medieval, toponímia àrab i romànica, arqueologia i reconstrucció territorial. Noms com Turixant, Almallutx, Cúber, Bini o Lofra permeten llegir les capes andalusines i feudals del paisatge de la muntanya mallorquina.

El número es clou amb una mostra gràfica del 51è Col·loqui de la Societat d’Onomàstica a Encamp, amb fotografies de Jesús Bernat Agut i Llorenç Roviras Sampere. El reportatge enumera dinou comunicacions, amb aportacions de Xavier Planas, Albert Pujal, Joan Peytaví, Carlos Ángel Rizos, Josep Maria Vigo, Victor Sabaté, Josep Canals, Jesús Burgueño, Ferran Lozano, Agustí López, Carles Gascón, Joan Tort, Quim Valera, Carlos Fernández, Enric Ribes, Joan Camps, Josep M. Bertran, Martí Huguet, Rosa M. Anglès, Ernestina Vallverdú, Josep Quer, Jesús Bernat, Ferran Guardiola, Victor Agulló, Dayana Arteta, Ricard Sentandreu, Fèlix Bruguera, Albert Turull i Emili Casanova.

Des d’un punt de vista acadèmic, Noms 25 no és un número monogràfic en el sentit estricte, ni tampoc una revista formada exclusivament per articles de recerca. És més aviat un espai viu de cultura onomàstica: notícies, bibliografia, ressenyes, literatura, articles, memòria local i crònica de col·loqui hi conviuen. Aquesta heterogeneïtat pot semblar desigual si s’hi busca una estructura estrictament acadèmica, però és precisament el que dona valor al número com a publicació de societat científica. La seva unitat profunda no és formal, sinó temàtica: tots els materials mostren que els noms són documents culturals, rastres històrics, eines de memòria i instruments de lectura del territori.

New Book: "Gender in Japanese Names Today" by Ivona Barešová and Francis Bond

 

A new book of major relevance to contemporary onomastics has appeared: Ivona Barešová and Francis Bond’s Gender in Japanese Names Today, published by Palacký University Olomouc in 2026. The volume is available as an online iPDF and carries the DOI 10.5507/ff.26.24465500. It was supported by the Czech Science Foundation and reviewed by James Breen and Giancarla Unser-Schutz.

The book examines how gender is expressed in Japanese given names today, with particular attention to the rise and character of gender-neutral names. It is not merely a list of names, but a broad linguistic and sociocultural study of how Japanese naming practices have changed across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The authors combine several kinds of evidence: baby-name rankings, historical naming patterns, online name-selection narratives, and large-scale datasets, including data from Baby Calendar, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company, and the Heisei Namae Jiten.

A central strength of the book is its careful distinction between the phonological form of a Japanese name - how it is read or pronounced - and its graphic form - how it is written. This distinction is essential in Japanese because the same written name may have several possible readings, and the same pronunciation may be written with different kanji, hiragana, or katakana. The authors explicitly state that they refer to pronunciation as the phonological form and written representation as the graphic form.

The study shows that Japanese names have become increasingly diverse. Contemporary parents often seek names that sound original, beautiful, meaningful, or globally suitable. This has weakened older, more rigid naming patterns. For much of the twentieth century, many women’s names were strongly marked by the suffix -ko 子, while many men’s names followed recognizable masculine patterns. Today, however, gender is expressed in more varied and often subtler ways.

One of the book’s most interesting findings is that gender-neutral names in Japan are not always chosen explicitly as ideological statements about gender. In many cases, gender neutrality emerges indirectly: parents may choose a name because of its sound, kanji meaning, originality, aesthetic appeal, or personal symbolism, and the name happens to be usable for both boys and girls. The authors argue that gender-neutral names therefore reflect not only changing attitudes toward gender, but also broader transformations in Japanese naming culture.

The book also shows an asymmetry in the development of gender-neutral names. Rather than boys’ and girls’ names moving equally toward a shared middle ground, the evidence suggests that more boys’ names are acquiring features formerly associated with girls’ names than the reverse. In other words, the softening of masculine naming patterns appears especially important in contemporary Japan.

Another important contribution is the book’s treatment of Japanese names as multilayered signs. A name may sound relatively gender-neutral but become more feminine or masculine through its kanji. The authors give the example of Mizuki, which can be gender-neutral in pronunciation but acquire a more feminine impression when written with a kanji meaning “princess.” This layered relationship between sound, script, and meaning is one of the specifically Japanese features of gender expression in names.

The book’s comparative chapter places Japan in a wider international context. It notes that rising name diversity and increased interest in gender-neutral names are not unique to Japan, but are also visible in countries such as the United States, the Netherlands, England and Wales, and Canada. At the same time, Japan remains distinctive because kanji allow gender to be encoded visually and semantically in ways that are not easily comparable to alphabetic naming systems.

Overall, Gender in Japanese Names Today is an important contribution to the study of names, gender, and social change. It will be useful not only for specialists in Japanese linguistics, but also for scholars of onomastics, sociolinguistics, gender studies, writing systems, and digital humanities. Its greatest value lies in showing that names do not simply reflect society: they participate in the subtle, everyday reshaping of social categories.

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日本語ブログ記事

新刊紹介：Ivona Barešová・Francis Bond 著『Gender in Japanese Names Today』

日本の名前研究、ジェンダー研究、そして現代社会における命名文化に関心をもつ読者にとって、注目すべき新刊が刊行されました。Ivona Barešová と Francis Bond による Gender in Japanese Names Today です。本書は Palacký University Olomouc から2026年に刊行され、DOI は 10.5507/ff.26.24465500 です。チェコ科学財団の支援を受けた研究成果であり、James Breen と Giancarla Unser-Schutz によって査読されています。

本書の中心テーマは、現代日本の名づけにおいて ジェンダーがどのように表現されているのか、そして近年注目される ジェンダー・ニュートラルな名前 がどのような特徴をもつのか、という問題です。本書は単なる名前リストではなく、言語学、社会言語学、ジェンダー研究、書記体系研究を横断する本格的な分析です。

著者たちは、Baby Calendar、明治安田生命の名前ランキング、そして Heisei Namae Jiten など、複数のデータソースを組み合わせています。日本では出生児全体の名前データに自由にアクセスすることが難しいため、本書は複数の資料を慎重に組み合わせることで、現代日本の命名傾向を立体的に描き出そうとしています。

本書で特に重要なのは、日本語の名前における 音韻形式 と 表記形式 の区別です。つまり、名前がどのように読まれるかという問題と、どの漢字・ひらがな・カタカナで書かれるかという問題は、必ずしも一致しません。著者たちは、名前の発音を phonological form、書かれた形を graphic form と呼び、この二つを区別しながら分析しています。

本書によれば、現代日本の名前は、過去数十年のあいだに大きく多様化しました。かつては、女性名における -子、男性名における特定の語尾や構造など、比較的明確なジェンダー標識が存在していました。しかし現在では、音の響き、漢字の意味、独自性、国際性、親の願いなどが複雑に組み合わさり、名前によるジェンダー表現はより柔軟で多層的になっています。

本書の興味深い結論の一つは、ジェンダー・ニュートラルな名前が、必ずしも親の明確なジェンダー意識や思想的選択によって選ばれているわけではない、という点です。むしろ、多くの場合、親は響きの美しさ、漢字の意味、個性、象徴性などを重視して名前を選び、その結果として、その名前が男児にも女児にも用いられる可能性をもつようになります。つまり、ジェンダー・ニュートラル化は、しばしば命名文化全体の変化の副産物として現れているのです。

さらに著者たちは、この変化が完全に対称的ではないことを指摘しています。男児名と女児名が同じように中間化しているというよりも、男児名の側が、従来は女性的とされた特徴をより多く取り入れる方向に動いているように見えます。つまり、現代日本では、男性名の「柔らかさ」が増していることが、ジェンダー境界のゆるやかな変化を理解する上で重要な手がかりになります。

日本語名の特徴は、音だけでなく、漢字によってジェンダー印象が変化しうる点にもあります。たとえば、Mizuki という音韻形式は比較的ジェンダー・ニュートラルでありうる一方、そこに「姫」を含む漢字表記が用いられると、より女性的な印象を帯びることがあります。このように、音・文字・意味が重なり合ってジェンダーを表現する点は、日本語の名前研究における重要な特徴です。

本書はまた、日本の事例を国際的な文脈にも位置づけています。アメリカ、オランダ、イングランドとウェールズ、カナダなどでも、ジェンダー・ニュートラルな名前や多様な名前への関心が高まっています。しかし、日本の場合には、漢字という表意的・視覚的な要素が加わるため、アルファベット圏とは異なる独自の構造をもっています。

総じて、Gender in Japanese Names Today は、日本語名研究にとどまらず、名前とジェンダー、名前と社会変化、名前と書記体系の関係を考える上で非常に重要な一冊です。名前は社会をただ映すだけではありません。名前は、家族、個性、ジェンダー、文化的価値を日常的に形づくる、小さくも強力な社会的記号なのです。

Conférence Onomastics Online sur les anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou

 

Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu donnera une conférence Onomastics Online sur les anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou

La série Onomastics Online, organisée par The International Council of Onomastic Sciences, accueillera prochainement Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu pour une conférence consacrée au rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou.

La conférence aura lieu le 13 août 2026 à 17h00 UTC+2 et portera le titre suivant :

« Le rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou »

Cette intervention abordera une question importante pour l’onomastique andine : les cultures andines ne distinguaient pas toujours systématiquement les anthroponymes, c’est-à-dire les noms de personnes, et les toponymes, c’est-à-dire les noms de lieux. Cette situation permet d’observer des phénomènes de transonymie, lorsque des noms circulent d’une catégorie onomastique à une autre. L’analyse de ces transferts peut contribuer à mieux comprendre certaines données historiques liées au Pérou, à l’Équateur et plus largement aux Andes.

Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu possède une formation interdisciplinaire. Il a obtenu une maîtrise en biologie médicale ainsi qu’une maîtrise en terminologie et traduction à l’Université Laval. Il termine actuellement un doctorat en linguistique historique et en langues autochtones d’Amérique du Sud à l’Université de Leyde, aux Pays-Bas. Ses recherches portent notamment sur la toponymie de la Colombie, de l’Équateur et du Pérou du XVIe siècle. Il a publié plusieurs articles dans le domaine de l’onomastique et développe actuellement des recherches sur l’onomastique paléohispanique.

La série Onomastics Online propose des conférences en ligne sur des sujets actuels liés aux noms propres et à la dénomination. Elle met en valeur la dimension internationale, historique, linguistique et culturelle des études onomastiques.

Inscription :
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/981f3535-a55e-4f21-b37d-728ca69ac120@8efc1bb9-b90f-4a48-bf6c-ba0686193b80

Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu to Speak at Onomastics Online on Inca Anthroponyms in the Toponymy of Peru

The International Council of Onomastic Sciences will host a new lecture in its Onomastics Online series, featuring Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu. The lecture will take place on 13 August 2026 at 17:00 UTC+2.

The title of the lecture is:

“Le rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou”
“The Role of Inca Anthroponyms in the Toponymy of Peru”

The talk will explore an important aspect of Andean onomastics: Andean cultures did not always make a systematic distinction between anthroponyms, or personal names, and toponyms, or place names. This opens the way to the study of transonymy, the movement of names from one onomastic category to another. By examining this phenomenon, the lecture will ask how such name transfers can help illuminate historical data and contribute to our understanding of the Andean past.

Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu has an interdisciplinary academic background. He holds a master’s degree in medical biology as well as a master’s degree in terminology and translation from Université Laval. He is currently completing a PhD in historical linguistics and Indigenous languages of South America at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His research focuses especially on the toponymy of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru in the sixteenth century. He has published several articles on onomastics and is also developing future research on Paleohispanic onomastics.

Onomastics Online is a lecture series devoted to current topics in the study of proper names and naming. The series highlights the multidisciplinary nature of onomastic research and brings together scholars working across languages, cultures, and historical periods.

Register here:
https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/981f3535-a55e-4f21-b37d-728ca69ac120@8efc1bb9-b90f-4a48-bf6c-ba0686193b80