India Digitizes Its Linguistic Geography: AI Meets Traditional Place-Name Surveying

 A groundbreaking partnership between Digital India's BHASHINI Division and the Survey of India promises to preserve India's multilingual toponymic heritage while modernizing geospatial infrastructure

On January 20, 2026, India took a significant step toward reconciling its extraordinary linguistic diversity with the demands of digital governance. The Digital India BHASHINI Division, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Survey of India to digitize, transcribe, and standardize over 1.6 million geographical place names using AI-powered speech and language technologies.

This isn't just administrative housekeeping - it's cultural preservation meeting technological innovation at massive scale.

The Challenge: 16 Lakh Locations, Dozens of Languages

India's toponymic landscape is staggeringly complex. The Survey of India, as the national nodal agency for geographical name standardization, conducts extensive field surveys collecting place names in local vernacular languages across 22 constitutionally recognized languages plus hundreds of dialects. These audio recordings capture how communities actually pronounce their villages, rivers, mountains, and neighborhoods - knowledge that risks being lost or distorted when transcribed by outsiders unfamiliar with local phonology.

The traditional workflow - manual transcription of audio recordings into various scripts (Devanagari, Roman, regional scripts like Tamil or Bengali) - is labor-intensive, error-prone, and struggles to maintain consistency across India's vast geographic and linguistic diversity. With over 1.6 million locations requiring documentation, the backlog is immense.

The Solution: BHASHINI's Language AI

BHASHINI (which stands for "BHASHa INterface for India") brings sophisticated speech-to-text and natural language processing capabilities specifically trained on Indian languages. The collaboration will deploy:

Automated Speech Recognition (ASR): Converting massive volumes of field-recorded audio into structured digital text across multiple Indian languages and dialects

Language Normalization: Standardizing spelling variations while preserving linguistic authenticity - crucial when a single place name might be pronounced differently across communities

Multi-script Processing: Generating toponyms in local scripts, Devanagari, Roman transliteration, and other formats simultaneously, ensuring accessibility across different administrative and technological systems

Validation Workflows: AI-assisted quality control maintaining accuracy while dramatically accelerating processing speed

This technological pipeline will feed into the National Geographical Name Information System (NGNIS), creating a comprehensive, validated Toponymy Database aligned with the National Geospatial Policy, 2022.

Why This Matters: Beyond Maps

The implications extend far beyond cartography:

Preserving Linguistic Heritage: Audio documentation captures correct pronunciation and regional variations that written forms alone cannot preserve. When a Kerala village's Malayalam name gets Romanized carelessly, meaning and cultural identity erode. This initiative prioritizes preservation of authentic local linguistic forms.

Governance and Service Delivery: Accurate, standardized place names are foundational for disaster management, infrastructure planning, census operations, and citizen services. Inconsistent toponyms create confusion in emergency response, development planning, and administrative coordination.

Multilingual Digital Infrastructure: The collaboration embeds language AI across national digital public infrastructure where linguistic accuracy is critical. Government portals, mapping applications, and administrative systems must handle India's linguistic diversity without forcing citizens into a single linguistic framework.

Standards Alignment: By coordinating with the Survey of India Toponymy Manual and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) codes, the initiative ensures that digitization doesn't create new inconsistencies but rather strengthens existing standardization frameworks.

The Indigenous AI Vision

Significantly, this MoU reflects the Government of India's broader vision of building "indigenous, AI-enabled digital infrastructure rooted in Indian linguistic realities." Rather than adapting Western language technologies designed for English, French, or Mandarin, BHASHINI develops AI trained on the specific phonological, morphological, and orthographic characteristics of Indian languages.

This matters because Indian languages present unique challenges: complex consonant clusters in Sanskrit-derived names, retroflex consonants absent in European languages, nasalization patterns, tone systems in certain tribal languages, and orthographic variation even within single languages (multiple valid spellings of the same toponym).

Generic AI trained primarily on English performs poorly on these features. Indigenous language AI - trained on actual Indian speech patterns, aware of regional pronunciation variations, capable of handling multiple scripts - is essential for this task.

Scale and Scope

The numbers are impressive:

• 1.6+ million locations to be documented
• Multiple scripts: Local regional scripts, Devanagari, Roman, and others
• Dozens of languages: Covering India's official languages plus numerous dialects
• Audio preservation: Maintaining pronunciation records alongside textual transcriptions
• Integration: Feeding Open Series Maps, governance platforms, and public information systems

This isn't a pilot project - it's nationwide infrastructure development operating at the scale India's population and diversity demand.

The Broader Context: Onomastics Meets Policy

From an onomastic perspective, this initiative addresses crucial questions about how postcolonial nations manage toponymic heritage in the digital age:

Standardization vs. Authenticity: How do you create consistent national datasets while respecting local linguistic variation? BHASHINI's approach - maintaining audio records alongside standardized written forms - attempts to balance both imperatives.

Script Politics: India's linguistic federalism means different states use different scripts. Generating toponyms simultaneously in multiple scripts acknowledges this reality rather than imposing hierarchical standardization.

Pronunciation Authority: By prioritizing field recordings from local communities, the initiative centers indigenous knowledge over colonial-era transliterations or outsider transcriptions. This is toponymic decolonization through technology.

Digital Divide: Ensuring place-name data works across "maps, digital platforms and governance systems" recognizes that toponymic accuracy matters for equitable access to government services, especially for rural and tribal communities whose place names have historically been most distorted in official records.

What Could Go Wrong

Potential challenges include:

• Dialect Recognition: Can AI accurately distinguish between closely related dialects where pronunciation differences matter?
• Script Standardization: When multiple valid spellings exist, whose version becomes official?
• Quality Control: How do you validate AI transcriptions at scale without recreating the manual bottleneck?
• Minority Languages: Will smaller linguistic communities receive equal technological investment?

The partnership's success depends on how sensitively these tensions are navigated.

A Model for Multilingual Nations

If executed well, India's approach could become a model for other linguistically diverse nations grappling with similar challenges - Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and many others face comparable toponymic complexities.

The innovation isn't just technological but conceptual: recognizing that accurate geographical data requires linguistic sophistication, that standardization needn't mean erasure of diversity, and that digital infrastructure must embed rather than override local knowledge systems.

As one official statement notes, the collaboration "reflects BHASHINI's approach of embedding language AI across national digital public infrastructure systems where linguistic accuracy is critical for service delivery and decision-making."

In other words: you can't govern a multilingual nation effectively if your maps, databases, and administrative systems can't handle linguistic diversity. This MoU acknowledges that reality and deploys AI to address it at scale.

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The Partnership:
Digital India BHASHINI Division (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology)
Survey of India
MoU signed: January 20, 2026

The Goal:
Digitize, transcribe, and standardize 1.6+ million geographical place names across India using AI-powered speech and language technologies

The Impact:
Preserving linguistic heritage while modernizing geospatial infrastructure for governance, disaster management, infrastructure planning, and citizen services

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For toponymists, this represents one of the largest-scale applications of language AI to place-name standardization globally. For India, it's essential infrastructure for equitable digital governance in a radically multilingual democracy.

24th Slovak Onomastic Conference "Continuity, Variability and Innovation in Onomastics"

Not an official poster. AI-generated image for illustrative purposes 


Continuity, Variability, and Innovation in Onomastics

17–19 August 2026 | Stará Lesná, High Tatras (Slovakia)

The Slovak Linguistic Society at the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS), together with the Slovak Onomastic Commission, warmly invite scholars and students to take part in the 24th Slovak Onomastic Conference, to be held from 17 to 19 August 2026 in the breathtaking setting of the High Tatras, at the SAS ACADEMIA Congress Centre in Stará Lesná.

About the Conference

In Slovakia, onomastics is regarded as an independent linguistic discipline that actively collaborates with other branches of linguistics and with a wide range of related scholarly fields. Although a universally accepted general theory of proper names has not yet emerged - and debates continue concerning proprial meaning and the relationship between appellatives and proper names - the Slovak onomastic tradition builds firmly on the theoretical and methodological foundations laid by Professor Vincent Blanár.

At the core of this tradition lies the understanding of the proper name as a linguistic sign sui generis, characterized by specifically onymic features, and by the close interconnection between the linguistic and onymic status of the proper name and its functioning in communication. This semiotic and functional-structural approach to proper names and onomastics has inspired not only Slovak scholars, but many researchers internationally.

The aim of the conference is to deepen and further develop Blanár’s theoretical legacy, especially in areas that have so far received less attention, and to address those domains where Slovak onomastics still sees room - and responsibility - for further advancement. This includes the use of innovative and variant methodological approaches in both comprehensive and partial analyses of different types of names.

At the same time, the organizers emphasize that the goal of onomastic research is not mere description. Empirical findings must be synthesized and interpreted in ways that genuinely advance theoretical knowledge in the field. The conference therefore seeks to critically examine whether new theoretical concepts, methods, and approaches are truly productive and innovative - or whether they sometimes represent only superficial borrowing from “neo-onomastic” disciplines, the revival of ideas long surpassed in onomastic theory, or the rebranding of well-established practices (such as the use of corpus data) as methodological breakthroughs.

Scientific Committee & Organizing Team

The conference is organized by an international team of leading onomasticians and linguists, including:

• doc. PaedDr. Ján Bauko, PhD.

• prof. dr hab. Artur Gałkowski

• prof. PhDr. Juraj Hladký, PhD.

• PhDr. Milan Harvalík, PhD.

• doc. PaedDr. Mária Imrichová, PhD.

• PhDr. Ľubor Králik, DSc.

• prof. Mgr. Jaromír Krško, PhD.

• prof. Svitlana Pachomova, DrSc.

• Sviatoslav Verbyč, DrSc.

• prof. PhDr. Pavol Žigo, CSc.
  (and many other distinguished members of the Slovak and international onomastic community)

Registration

• Registration method: Online via registration form

• Deadline: 15 April 2026

• Required for: Both active and passive participants

Conference Fees

• Standard fee: €100

• Doctoral students: €60

• Late payment: €120 / €80 (doctoral students)
  The fee covers conference organization, the gala dinner, coffee breaks, and the publication of the conference proceedings.

• Payment deadline: 15 July 2026

Papers & Publication

• Notification of acceptance: by 31 May 2026

• Publication format: Conference proceedings

• Full paper deadline: 30 November 2026

Conference Languages

• For Slavic participants: their native Slavic languages

• For non-Slavic participants: Slavic languages, English, and German

Practical Information

Details on accommodation, meals, and transport will be sent by 15 June 2026.
Accommodation and meals must be reserved by 30 July 2026.

Contact person: PhDr. Iveta Valentová, PhD. 📧 iveta.valentova@juls.savba.sk

Accommodation & Meals

Participants cover their own accommodation, meals, and travel costs. The SAS ACADEMIA Congress Centre offers discounted accommodation for conference participants (and accompanying family members) from 15–20 August 2026, with the possibility of extending the stay. Due to limited capacity, early booking is strongly recommended.

Breakfast is included in the accommodation price. Lunches and dinners are ordered and paid individually at the congress centre. The gala dinner and coffee breaks are included in the conference fee.

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📌 Why attend?
The 24th Slovak Onomastic Conference promises a rare combination of theoretical depth, methodological debate, and international dialogue, set against one of Central Europe’s most spectacular natural backdrops. It is an unmissable event for anyone working on names, naming, and the theory of proper names - past, present, and future.

Stručne po slovensky

Slovenská jazykovedná spoločnosť pri Jazykovednom ústave Ľ. Štúra SAV a Slovenská onomastická komisia pozývajú na 24. slovenskú onomastickú konferenciu s názvom Kontinuita, variabilita a inovácie v onomastike, ktorá sa uskutoční 17. – 19. augusta 2026 v Starej Lesnej vo Vysokých Tatrách (Kongresové centrum SAV ACADEMIA).

Konferencia nadväzuje na teoretické a metodologické východiská slovenskej onomastickej školy (V. Blanár) a kladie dôraz na kritickú reflexiu nových prístupov, metód a konceptov v onomastike. Cieľom je nielen opis onymického materiálu, ale aj jeho syntéza a posun teoretického poznania.

Prihlášky (aktívna aj pasívna účasť) je potrebné podať do 15. 4. 2026. Konferenčné jazyky sú slovanské jazyky, angličtina a nemčina. Konferencia ponúka odborný program, zborník príspevkov a stretnutie medzinárodnej onomastickej komunity v jedinečnom horskom prostredí.

Online-Vortrag "Dorf und Umland. Orts- und Flurnamen"

 Flurnamen erzählen Geschichte

Was verraten Orts- und Flurnamen über das Leben vergangener Jahrhunderte?
Viele dieser Namen sind wandelbar und reichen doch bis ins Mittelalter zurück.

In unserem Online-Vortrag im Rahmen der Digitalen Mitteldeutschen Vortragsreihe gehen wir den sprachlichen Spuren der Reformation in der mitteldeutschen Namenlandschaft nach. Flur- und Ortsnamen geben Hinweise auf historische Ereignisse und zeigen, wie Menschen mit ihnen umgingen. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt auf dem Thüringischen Flurnamenportal.

🎤 Es referieren:
• Dr. Christian Zschieschang (Sorbisches Institut e.V.)
• PD Dr. Barbara Aehnlich (Universität Jena)
• David Brosius (Universität Jena)

🗓 02.02.2026
⏰ 18:00 Uhr
💻 Online

🔗 Meldet euch jetzt an: hier

#Flurnamen #Ortsnamen #Reformation #Mitteldeutschland #Thüringen #Sprachgeschichte 
#GeschichteEntdecken #OnlineVortrag #Wissenschaft #Kulturgeschichte

A Cross-Cultural Guide to Biblical Names in China and Australia

Biblical names offer a timeless foundation, providing a shared language of faith that resonates globally. However, we understand that a name must do more than just honor scripture; it must also sound natural in an Australian classroom and feel respectful within a Chinese family home.

With a curated collection of a couple thousand names, we have explored the linguistic and cultural nuances of both regions. We have highlighted the top-trending names currently favored in Australia and China, helping you identify choices that are modern and accessible, as well as those that remain classic and traditional.

Product information from here

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0GJYJY2XB

Editor ‏ : ‎ Independently published

When: ‎ 26. Januar 2026

Language ‏ : ‎ Englisch

Pages ‏ : ‎ 374 pp.

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8245706351

When Baby Names Reveal Political History: R. Urbatsch's Groundbreaking Study

A child named "Federal Constitution" in 1790. "States Rights" appearing across the antebellum South. The spelling "Meagan" surging in Reagan-supporting areas. What do these naming choices tell us about American political identity?

Columbia University Press has published The Politics of Names: Attitudes, Identity, and the Naming of Children in American History by R. Urbatsch, a fascinating exploration of how parents' most personal decisions - choosing their children's names - function as powerful indicators of political sentiment across centuries.

Names as Political Weathervanes

Urbatsch's central insight is deceptively simple but profoundly revealing: naming patterns are weathervanes for political attitudes. When Massachusetts parents named their child "Federal Constitution" in 1790, they weren't just being eccentric - they were documenting their enthusiasm for the newly ratified founding document. When "States Rights" appeared as a given name throughout the South in the nineteenth century, it mapped the intensity of secessionist sentiment more accurately than any poll could.

The book traces how political naming extends far beyond obvious commemorations of presidents or leaders. It encompasses:

• Ideological labels becoming personal names (Federal Constitution, States Rights)
• Presidential surname popularity tracking electoral success and national crises
• Sibling naming patterns revealing household political loyalties (McKinley's brother disproportionately named Roosevelt)
• Spelling variations correlating with regional political preferences (Meagan vs. Megan in Reagan-supporting areas)
• Dramatic surges and crashes in names like Hillary, mapping public opinion in real-time

Why This Methodology Matters

Traditional political history relies on elections, speeches, newspapers, and surveys. But these sources have limitations—they capture elite opinion, public performance, or self-reported attitudes. Naming choices reveal something different: revealed preferences at the most intimate level.

When parents name a child, they're making a statement about identity, values, and aspirations that will last a lifetime. They're often unaware they're participating in broader political patterns. This makes aggregated naming data extraordinarily valuable - it captures genuine sentiment without the distortions of social desirability bias or political performance.

As one reviewer notes, Urbatsch "creates a masterpiece of innovative, nontraditional social science research" by using this unconventional data source to gauge public opinion across American political history.

What the Book Illuminates

The study opens new windows onto historical questions across multiple dimensions:

Race and ethnicity: How do immigrant communities signal assimilation or resistance through naming? When do minority names enter mainstream popularity, and what does that timing reveal about integration?

Gender: How do political moments shape gendered naming conventions? What happens when women enter politics - do their names become viable for children in ways previously unimaginable?

Nationalism: When does patriotic naming surge? How do wars, threats, and national triumphs manifest in birth registries?

Religion: How do religious revivals, secularization, and denominational conflicts appear in biblical versus secular name preferences?

Regional identity: What do North-South, urban-rural, or coastal-interior naming differences reveal about persistent political divides?

The book doesn't just document these patterns - it interprets them, connecting naming trends to broader questions of identity, public sentiment, and political behavior across American history.

From Federal Constitution to Hillary

The examples Urbatsch provides are striking in their range. "Federal Constitution" (1790) captures revolutionary-era nation-building enthusiasm. "States Rights" documents antebellum sectional conflict. The McKinley-Roosevelt sibling pattern reveals how presidential succession shaped household naming within single families.

The "Meagan/Megan" spelling correlation with Reagan support is particularly fascinating - it suggests political identity can influence even orthographic preferences, with parents unconsciously gravitating toward spellings that echo admired leaders.

The Hillary trajectory is perhaps most dramatic: surging when the Clintons emerged on the political scene, then crashing spectacularly as polarization intensified. This single name's rise and fall documents changing attitudes toward political wives, feminism, and partisan identity with remarkable precision.

Names as Historical Archive

One reviewer observes that the book "insightfully demonstrates how, across centuries, parents have connected their children's identities to political contexts through the act of naming." This isn't arbitrary - names function as mirrors of social and political landscapes.

Birth registries become archives of public opinion. The Social Security Death Master File transforms into a massive database documenting which historical moments moved ordinary Americans enough to commemorate them in their children's names. Census records reveal which communities embraced or rejected particular political identities through naming.

Creative, Insightful, Entertaining

What makes The Politics of Names accessible beyond specialist audiences is its combination of rigorous methodology with compelling storytelling. As another reviewer notes, it's "creative, insightful, and entertaining throughout" - rare praise for academic political science.

The book isn't dry data analysis. It's about real parents making real choices in specific historical moments, their decisions aggregating into patterns that reveal collective consciousness. Every unusual political name has a story: parents so inspired by a leader, event, or idea that they permanently inscribed it onto their child's identity.

For Historians, Political Scientists, and Parents

This study matters for multiple audiences:

Historians gain new methodology for tracking public opinion in eras before modern polling, revealing sentiment among populations who left few written records.

Political scientists discover innovative approaches to measuring political identity and partisan alignment beyond traditional survey instruments.

Sociologists find empirical evidence for how identity construction operates at the most intimate familial level.

Parents might recognize themselves in these patterns - or become more conscious of how their "personal" naming choices participate in larger political currents.

The Bigger Picture

The Politics of Names contributes to growing recognition that everyday decisions - where we live, what we buy, how we name our children - are increasingly sorted by political identity in America. Urbatsch documents that this isn't new; it's been happening since the nation's founding.

But the research also suggests something hopeful: naming patterns change. Names that surge can crash. Communities that embrace certain identities can shift. The birth registry documents not just polarization but also periods of convergence, shared enthusiasm, and cross-partisan admiration for leaders and ideas.

In an era of intense political division, understanding how Americans have always used names to signal identity - while also sometimes transcending partisan boundaries - offers perspective on both continuity and change in American political culture.

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The Politics of Names: Attitudes, Identity, and the Naming of Children in American History
R. Urbatsch
Columbia University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7312/urba22168
eBook ISBN: 9780231565080

Available through Columbia University Press and distributed internationally by De Gruyter

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For scholars interested in political behavior, American history, onomastics, or the sociology of identity, this book offers essential new methodology and compelling historical insights. For anyone who's ever wondered why certain names suddenly become popular - or why they chose the name they did - it provides fascinating answers.

Namenkundliche Informationen Band 117

 Neue Perspektiven in der deutschen Namenkunde: Namenkundliche Informationen Band 117

Die neueste Ausgabe der Namenkundlichen Informationen (Band 117, 2025) ist soeben erschienen und vereint vielfältige Forschungsbeiträge, die von altsorbischer Etymologie über urbane Toponymie bis hin zu antiken Inschriften und volkssprachlichen Pflanzennamen reichen. Herausgegeben von der Philologischen Fakultät der Universität Leipzig und der Gesellschaft für Namenforschung e.V., setzt diese traditionsreiche Zeitschrift – seit 1964 ununterbrochen publiziert – ihre Tradition strenger, interdisziplinärer onomastischer Forschung fort.

Inhalt von Band 117

Walter Wenzel: 20. Januar 1929 - 17. Juni 2025 [Nachruf]

Inge Bily (S. 13-17)

Die Ausgabe beginnt mit einer Würdigung Walter Wenzels, einer überragenden Gestalt der deutschen Onomastik, der im Juni 2025 im Alter von 96 Jahren verstarb. Wenzels Beiträge zur slawischen und germanischen Namenkunde prägten Generationen von Forschern. Für diejenigen, die mit seinem Werk nicht vertraut sind, kontextualisiert dieser Nachruf ein Leben linguistischer Detektivarbeit, die die komplexen etymologischen Schichten mitteleuropäischer Ortsnamen entwirrt.

Eine überfällige onomastische Aktion zu altsorbisch *Pro- oder Altsorben als Schwellenhauer?

Bernd Koenitz (S. 21-72)

Koenitz befasst sich in dieser 50-seitigen Studie mit einem substanziellen etymologischen Rätsel, indem er altsorbische Namenelemente untersucht. Die Sorben (Wenden) waren ein slawisches Volk, das historisch das heutige Ostdeutschland bewohnte, und ihre linguistischen Spuren überleben eingebettet in deutschen Ortsnamen. Koenitz' Untersuchung des rekonstruierten altsorbischen Elements *Pro- scheint bestehende etymologische Theorien herauszufordern oder zu verfeinern – jene Art akribischer philologischer Arbeit, die entweder überliefertes Wissen über frühmittelalterliche Benennungsmuster bestätigt oder umstößt.

Der kryptische Verweis auf "Schwellenhauer" deutet auf die Untersuchung von Berufs- oder Siedlungsmustern hin, die in der Toponymie bewahrt wurden. Diese 50 Seiten repräsentieren wahrscheinlich jahrelange Archivarbeit, vergleichende Linguistik und systematische Analyse von Ortsnamenverteilungen.

Von Alken bis Utbremen: Orts-, Ortsteil- und Straßennamen der Stadt Bremen

Barbara Aehnlich & Kristin Loga (S. 73-98)

Eine umfassende toponymische Bestandsaufnahme Bremens – einer der historischen Hansestädte Deutschlands. Aehnlich und Loga dokumentieren systematisch die Nomenklatur der Stadt von Stadtteilen bis zu Straßennamen und verfolgen wahrscheinlich linguistische Schichten vom mittelalterlichen Niederdeutsch bis zur modernen Standardisierung.

Bremens Namenslandschaft spiegelt seine Handelsgeschichte, Kriegsschäden und Wiederaufbau sowie zeitgenössische Umbenennungsdebatten wider. Diese Art urbaner onomastischer Bestandsaufnahme dient sowohl wissenschaftlichen als auch bürgerlichen Zwecken – sie bewahrt etymologisches Wissen und dokumentiert gleichzeitig, wie Städte sich durch Nomenklatur an ihre Vergangenheit erinnern (und sie vergessen).

Für alle, die deutsche Stadttoponymie, vergleichende hanseatische Benennungspraktiken oder das Überleben des Niederdeutschen in modernen Ortsnamen erforschen, bietet diese Studie wesentliche Primärdokumentation.

Die Namen auf dem Silberblech von Vrh gradu

Diether Schürr (S. 99-106)

Eine eng fokussierte epigraphische Studie, die Personennamen untersucht, die auf einem antiken Silberartefakt aus Vrh gradu (wahrscheinlich in Slowenien oder im weiteren Alpenraum) eingraviert sind. Schürr ist bekannt für seine Arbeiten zu antiken italischen und alpinen Sprachen, und dieser kurze Artikel entschlüsselt und kontextualisiert vermutlich Namen aus vorrömischen oder früh römischen Perioden.

Diese Inschriften – ob venetisch, rätisch oder früh romanisch – bewahren linguistische Evidenz von Kulturen, die minimale schriftliche Aufzeichnungen hinterließen. Jeder entzifferte Name trägt zur Rekonstruktion von Bevölkerungsbewegungen, Sprachkontakt und onomastischen Praktiken in der Antike bei. Mit nur acht Seiten ist dies konzentrierte philologische Analyse, bei der einzelne Buchstaben enormes interpretatives Gewicht tragen.

Wenn das 'Löwenmaul' das 'Hündchen' trifft – zum interkulturellen Vergleich umgangssprachlicher Pflanzenbezeichnungen

Michael Reichelt (S. 107-132)

Reichelts Studie wagt sich in die Phytonymie – die Pflanzenbenennung – und vergleicht, wie verschiedene Sprachgemeinschaften volkssprachliche botanische Nomenklaturen schaffen. Der spielerische Verweis im Titel auf "Löwenmaul" und "Hündchen" bezieht sich wahrscheinlich auf das Löwenmaul (Antirrhinum), das im Deutschen buchstäblich "Löwenmaul" genannt wird, aber möglicherweise in anderen Sprachen canine Metaphern verwendet.

Volkstümliche Pflanzennamen offenbaren kulturelle Wahrnehmungen, metaphorisches Denken und linguistische Kreativität. Wenn Deutsche einen Löwenmund sehen und eine andere Kultur einen Welpen in derselben Blume, offenbart dies divergierende kognitive Muster in der Nomenklatur. Reichelts interkultureller Vergleich – der untersucht, wie mehrere Sprachgemeinschaften unabhängig voneinander dieselben Pflanzen benennen – bietet Einblicke sowohl in universelle als auch in kulturspezifische Benennungslogik.

Mit 25 Seiten ist dies substantielle ethnolinguistische Arbeit, die wahrscheinlich auf botanischen Sammlungen, dialektologischer Feldforschung und vergleichender onomastischer Theorie beruht.

Warum diese Ausgabe wichtig ist

Namenkundliche Informationen nimmt eine einzigartige Position in der europäischen Onomastik ein – sie verbindet historische Linguistik, Kulturanthropologie und angewandte Toponymie. Diese besondere Ausgabe demonstriert die Breite des Fachgebiets:

Zeitliche Spanne: Von antiken alpinen Inschriften (Schürr) über mittelalterliche sorbische Siedlungen (Koenitz) bis zum gegenwärtigen Bremen (Aehnlich/Loga)

Methodologische Vielfalt: Epigraphik, systematische urbane Bestandsaufnahmen, etymologische Rekonstruktion, vergleichende Ethnolinguistik

Geografische Reichweite: Deutsche Stadtzentren, slawische Grenzgebiete, alpine Archäologie, sprachübergreifende Pflanzenbenennung

Disziplinäre Integration: Historische Linguistik trifft auf Archäologie, Dialektgeographie auf Botanik, Philologie informiert Stadtplanung

Open Access und akademische Infrastruktur

Bedeutsamerweise wechselte NI 2023 zu Gold Open Access und macht alle Inhalte unter der Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 Lizenz frei herunterladbar. Dies repräsentiert breitere Verschiebungen im europäischen akademischen Publizieren – Wissen, das von öffentlichen Institutionen (Universität Leipzig, DFG) finanziert wird, sollte öffentlich zugänglich sein.

Die Zeitschrift erhebt moderate Publikationsgebühren (200 € bei institutioneller Förderung), weit unter den Raten kommerzieller Verlage. Langfristige digitale Archivierung ist durch das institutionelle Repository der SLUB Dresden garantiert, was sicherstellt, dass diese spezialisierten Studien für zukünftige Forscher zugänglich bleiben.

Für eine Zeitschrift, die auf Deutsch mit häufigen slawischen, niederdeutschen und altsprachlichen Inhalten publiziert – genau die Forschung, die in der anglophon dominierten Akademie anfällig für Marginalisierung ist – ist Open Access besonders entscheidend.

Das Wenzel-Erbe

Die Eröffnung mit Inge Bilys Nachruf auf Walter Wenzel schafft eine ergreifende Rahmung. Wenzel erlebte und trug zur Transformation der Onomastik von vordigitaler Archivarbeit zur computergestützten Korpuslinguistik bei. Seine 96 Jahre umspannten Nazi-Deutschland, DDR-Isolation, Wiedervereinigung und digitale Revolution – doch sein wissenschaftliches Engagement für die Entwirrung von Namenetymologien blieb konstant.

Die anderen Beiträge der Ausgabe – sei es Koenitz' sorbische Forschung oder Schürrs epigraphische Analyse – bauen auf Fundamenten auf, die Forscher wie Wenzel gelegt haben. Diese Kontinuität, die Generationen geduldiger philologischer Arbeit überspannt, charakterisiert seriöse onomastische Forschung.

Für wen?

Dies ist keine leichte Lektüre. Es handelt sich um spezialisierte akademische Artikel, die erheblichen linguistischen Hintergrund voraussetzen. Aber für:

• Toponymiker, die an deutschen oder slawischen Ortsnamen arbeiten
• Historische Linguisten, die Sprachkontakt in Mitteleuropa erforschen
• Stadthistoriker, die städtische Nomenklatur dokumentieren
• Ethnobotaniker, die volkssprachliche Pflanzenbenennung studieren
• Epigraphiker, die antike alpine Inschriften entziffern

...bietet diese Ausgabe wesentliche Primärforschung und methodologische Modelle.

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Zugang zur vollständigen Ausgabe kostenlos:
Namenkundliche Informationen Band 117 (2025)

Alle Artikel als PDF-Downloads unter CC BY 4.0 Lizenz verfügbar

Herausgegeben von: Philologische Fakultät der Universität Leipzig & Gesellschaft für Namenforschung e.V. (GfN)

When Street Names Speak: New Research on Minority Languages in Urban Spaces

 Fresh proceedings from South Africa explore how cities remember - and forget - linguistic diversity

The University of Johannesburg Press has just released The Presence of Minority and Indigenous Languages in Urban Naming, documenting the 7th International Symposium on Place Names held in Bloemfontein in September 2023. For anyone interested in how power, memory, and identity get inscribed into city streets, this collection offers crucial insights from Southern African and international scholars.

Why Urban Naming Matters

Street names aren't neutral administrative labels - they're political statements frozen into daily geography. When cities rename streets, remove colonial commemorations, or standardize indigenous place names, they're negotiating fundamental questions: Whose history gets preserved? Which languages deserve official recognition? How do minority communities maintain visibility in urban spaces dominated by majority cultures?

This volume tackles these questions across remarkably diverse contexts, from Maseru's linguistic landscape to Slovenian microtoponyms surviving in bilingual Hungarian territory.

Five Studies, Multiple Perspectives

Peter Jordan opens with commemorative naming's inherent problems - the tension between honoring the past and creating inclusive present-day urban environments. His contribution frames the core dilemma: how do cities balance historical memory with contemporary diversity?

The Maseru study (Kolobe, Mokala, Mosebi) navigates Lesotho's capital, where street naming reflects complex linguistic negotiations between Sesotho, English, and various commemorative traditions. Their work reveals how naming practices create visible linguistic hierarchies in postcolonial urban settings.

Ernestina Rapeane-Mathonsi's critical toponymic analysis examines a southern African city's naming practices, demonstrating how linguistic landscapes either validate or marginalize indigenous languages through official nomenclature choices.

The Slovenian microtoponyms research (Geršič, Horvat, Pipan) documents something remarkable: small-scale place names preserving Slovenian linguistic heritage in Hungarian territory. These microtoponyms—names for fields, streams, neighborhoods - often survive long after official nomenclature erases minority languages. They're linguistic archaeology embedded in landscape.

Perhaps most fascinating is the South African Sign Language (SASL) study by de Lange and colleagues. If SASL is an official language, should cities have official sign-language place names? The question exposes assumptions about what constitutes "official" naming - must it be written? Visual? How do Deaf communities navigate urban spaces when no standardized SASL toponyms exist?

What Emerges From the Data

Several threads connect these diverse studies:

Etymology as resistance: Understanding place-name origins reveals suppressed histories. When indigenous names get translated, transliterated, or replaced, etymological research becomes political act - recovering meanings that dominant cultures tried to erase.

Informal vs. formal naming: Communities often maintain unofficial names long after authorities impose new ones. These parallel naming systems document cultural persistence against homogenizing pressures.

The guideline problem: Every study highlights inadequate frameworks for managing multilingual urban naming. Authorities lack consistent principles for preserving minority languages while maintaining practical navigability.

Symbolic value: Place names carry emotional and cultural weight far exceeding their navigational function. Renaming isn't just updating maps - it's renegotiating collective identity.

For Whom This Matters

This isn't just academic abstraction. The research has direct implications for:

• Urban planners managing linguistically diverse cities
• Policy makers developing inclusive naming guidelines
• Minority language activists advocating for toponymic recognition
• Toponymists studying how languages persist through place names
• Anyone interested in how cities encode power relations into geography

The South African context is particularly instructive. Post-apartheid place-name transformation has been ongoing for three decades, offering longitudinal data on what works (and doesn't) when societies attempt linguistic justice through nomenclature.

Freely Accessible

Crucially, UJ Press published this as open access - freely downloadable in PDF, EPUB, and XML formats. This isn't scholarship locked behind paywalls but knowledge shared internationally, particularly valuable for researchers in the Global South working on similar questions.

The symposium brought together Austrian, Lesotho, Slovenian, and South African scholars, creating comparative perspectives impossible from single-nation studies. When Slovenian researchers studying minority toponyms in Hungary dialogue with South African scholars examining indigenous urban naming, patterns emerge that national scholarship alone couldn't reveal.

The Unfinished Project

What makes this volume intellectually honest is its implicit acknowledgment: there are no perfect solutions. Preserving every indigenous microtoponym while maintaining navigable urban infrastructure creates genuine tensions. Commemorating historical figures in street names risks freezing colonial or authoritarian legacies into contemporary geography. Standardizing minority language names makes them official but potentially rigid.

The research doesn't pretend to resolve these contradictions. Instead, it documents them carefully, providing evidence for ongoing debates about how multilingual democracies can create urban landscapes where multiple linguistic communities see themselves reflected.

For scholars of toponymy, linguistic landscape studies, or postcolonial urbanism, this collection is essential reading. For anyone who's ever wondered why their city's street names tell only certain stories, it's revelatory.

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Download free: UJ Press - The Presence of Minority and Indigenous Languages in Urban Naming

Citation: Loth, C-R. (Ed.). (2025). The Presence of Minority and Indigenous Languages in Urban Naming: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Place Names 2023. UJ Press. https://doi.org/10.64449/9781997468639

The SNSBI's 32nd annual conference

Medieval Walls, Modern Questions: Name Studies Returns to Bury St Edmunds

The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland's 32nd annual conference lands in a town that knows something about names mattering. Bury St Edmunds - literally named after a martyred Anglo-Saxon king whose shrine made this Suffolk market town a medieval pilgrimage powerhouse - hosts scholars March 27-29, 2026, to discuss how names anchor identity, preserve memory, and reveal hidden histories.

Where Medieval Architecture Meets Onomastic Research

The venue itself makes a statement. The Guildhall, a 15th-century timber-framed building in the heart of Bury's historic center, provides atmospheric backdrop for investigating how nomenclature shapes our understanding of place, person, and past. There's something fitting about debating surname evolution and toponymic evidence while surrounded by oak beams that predate the printing press.

Beyond the Archive: Living Landscape as Evidence

The Sunday afternoon coach trip to Long Melford and Lavenham isn't tourist diversion - it's field research. These picture-postcard Suffolk villages preserve medieval street layouts and building names that document economic history, migration patterns, and social stratification. Walking through Lavenham (once England's 14th wealthiest town, enriched by wool trade) while discussing place-name evidence is onomastics as immersive experience rather than desk-bound theory.

Long Melford's estates and Lavenham's merchant families left naming traces - in manorial records, church dedications, property deeds - that reveal who held power, who owned land, and whose memory communities chose to preserve through nomenclature.

Keynote: When Abbeys Ruled Suffolk

Professor Mark Bailey of the University of East Anglia opens Friday evening with "The estates of Bury St Edmunds abbey 1250 to 1450" - directly relevant to anyone researching medieval English name patterns. Monastic estates generated massive documentation: rent rolls, court records, land transfers. These sources are goldmines for surname formation, occupational nomenclature, and tracking how personal names evolved during the crucial period when hereditary surnames were solidifying.

Bailey's expertise in medieval Suffolk economy means delegates get context for why certain names appear in records - the social and economic structures that generated the naming evidence we now study.

Why This Conference Matters

SNSBI conferences bring together academic researchers, independent scholars, family historians, and place-name enthusiasts - a rare interdisciplinary mix. Where else do medieval historians discuss field-name evidence alongside linguists analyzing phonetic shifts and genealogists tracking surname migrations?

The weekend promises papers on:

• Medieval Suffolk naming patterns
• Project reports from ongoing place-name surveys
• Surname distribution and migration
• Toponymic evidence for landscape history
• Whatever current research participants bring

Practical Details

When: March 27-29, 2026
Where: The Guildhall, Guildhall Street, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Format: Friday evening keynote + dinner, full Saturday/Sunday programmes, Sunday afternoon coach trip
Registration: Conference booking form
Accommodation: Delegates arrange independently
Venue info: Bury St Edmunds Guildhall

For Whom?

If you're researching British place-names, tracking surname evolution, investigating medieval demographics through nomenclature, or simply fascinated by how names preserve social memory across centuries, this conference offers concentrated expertise and collaborative energy you won't find elsewhere.

Bury St Edmunds itself is worth the trip: medieval abbey ruins, Georgian streetscapes, and England's only intact Tudor gatehouse. The town's layers - Anglo-Saxon, Norman, medieval merchant wealth, Georgian elegance - are readable through its nomenclature if you know how to look.

Which is precisely what this conference teaches you to do.

The Deeper Appeal

Name studies occupies a curious academic niche: simultaneously hyper-specialized (requiring linguistic, historical, and geographical expertise) and universally accessible (everyone has names, everyone cares about their meanings). SNSBI conferences embrace both dimensions - rigorous scholarship presented in ways that non-specialists can engage with.

Whether you're an established medievalist or an amateur genealogist who's noticed strange surname clustering in 15th-century manor records, there's space at this table. The society's longevity (32 years of annual conferences) reflects its success in maintaining that balance.

Plus, spending a weekend in medieval Suffolk discussing how names work beats most alternative ways to spend late March.

Book now. Medieval guildhalls don't hold unlimited delegates, and Suffolk B&Bs fill up. The registration link is live, accommodation is your responsibility, and the coach to Lavenham waits for no one.

See you in Bury St Edmunds, where even the town's name is a case study in medieval politics, religious power, and commemorative nomenclature.

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The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland welcomes researchers at all career stages and from all backgrounds. Student rates available. First-time attendees particularly encouraged.