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

SNSBI Essay Prize 2025: Street Names, Heritage, and Bilingual Urban Memory

AI-generated poster, illustration only

 The Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland has announced two joint winners of the 2025 SNSBI Essay Prize. Congratulations go to Alina Brust of the University of Glasgow for “Reflections of Gaelic Heritage in the Street Names of Girvan” and Xiang Lin of The University of Edinburgh for “Structure and Formation of bilingual Hong Kong street-names.”

The prize recognises emerging work in name studies, a field that connects language, history, geography, identity, and cultural memory. This is very much in line with SNSBI’s broader mission: the Society, founded in 1991, promotes the study of place-names, personal names, and other names, and brings together both academic researchers and wider name enthusiasts.

What is especially striking about the 2025 result is that both winning essays focus on street names. This is no coincidence. Street names are among the most visible forms of everyday onomastics. They appear on signs, maps, addresses, official documents, and digital navigation systems. Yet they also preserve older layers of language, power, settlement, memory, and identity.

Alina Brust’s essay on Gaelic heritage in the street names of Girvan points to an important question in Scottish toponymy: how do urban and local names reflect older linguistic landscapes? Scottish Gaelic is no longer dominant in much of lowland or south-western Scotland, but Gaelic and Celtic elements can remain embedded in place-names long after everyday language use has shifted. Modern Gaelic place-name work also shows how Gaelic forms continue to matter in contemporary naming practice, including the creation of new Gaelic street names where appropriate. Historical sources such as the Ayrshire Ordnance Survey Name Books are particularly valuable here, since they preserve nineteenth-century evidence for names in the parish of Girvan and their local interpretation.

Xiang Lin’s essay on bilingual Hong Kong street-names opens a different but equally important onomastic world. Hong Kong’s street-name system is shaped by English and Chinese forms that do not always correspond in a simple one-to-one way. Recent research on Hong Kong street names has shown that English and Chinese names may have different semantic origins; for example, one official form may refer to a structure or colonial figure, while the other encodes a local descriptive or cultural meaning. This makes Hong Kong a particularly rich case for studying bilingual naming, translation, colonial history, urban planning, and linguistic landscape.

Together, the two prize-winning essays demonstrate the strength of contemporary student research in onomastics. One looks at the traces of Gaelic heritage in a Scottish town; the other examines the structure of bilingual naming in one of the world’s most complex urban landscapes. Both remind us that street names are never merely practical labels. They are small public texts through which communities organise space, remember the past, negotiate identity, and make language visible.

The SNSBI Essay Prize has previously recognised work on topics such as suburban house signs, Anglo-Saxon personal names, public-house names, and the street names of St Andrews, showing the wide range of subjects that can be approached through name studies. The 2025 joint winners continue this tradition beautifully: they show that even the names we pass every day can tell larger stories about heritage, bilingualism, and the cultural life of places.

Congratulations to Alina Brust and Xiang Lin on their joint success in the 2025 SNSBI Essay Prize.

Call for Papers "Academics on Fire: Controversies over (Re)Naming Educational Institutions"

AI-generated poster, non official illustration

 

The American Name Society invites proposals for an organized session at the 2027 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, to be held in San Francisco, California, from 6–9 January 2027.

The session, titled “Academics on Fire: Controversies over (Re)Naming Educational Institutions,” will explore one of the most visible and politically charged areas of contemporary onomastics: the naming and renaming of educational spaces.

Names of universities, schools, buildings, campuses, halls, memorials, scholarships, academic programs, fraternities, sororities, and honor societies are never neutral labels. They communicate institutional history, cultural memory, social values, and political orientation. At the same time, they may preserve older hierarchies, controversial commemorations, or contested narratives. For this reason, decisions to retain, remove, reinterpret, or replace institutional names often become catalysts for public debate.

The proposed session seeks papers examining how naming and renaming shape institutional identity in educational contexts. Possible topics include the history of institutional namesakes, controversies over eponyms, strategies for deciding whether names should be retained or changed, demographic patterns in institutional naming, and diachronic or synchronic variation in the naming practices of educational bodies.

The call is open to a wide range of approaches. There are no restrictions regarding period, language, country, methodology, theoretical framework, or level of educational institution. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method studies are all welcome, provided that the analysis is clearly focused on names and naming. Any use of artificial intelligence should be disclosed at the end of the proposal.

Proposals should include the presenter’s name and affiliation, the title of the proposed paper, and an abstract of up to 250 words. Submissions should be sent to abstracts@americannamesociety.org with “LSA2027” in the subject line.

The deadline for abstracts is 31 August 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 September 2026. Accepted presenters must be current members of the American Name Society and register for the LSA Annual Meeting.

This session promises to be a timely contribution to the study of names as instruments of memory, identity, authority, and public controversy in academic life.

300 forms and variants of the name Dimitri by Vasil Drvošanov

 

The video presents Macedonian linguist and onomastician Vasil Drvošanov, author of the personal-name dictionary Onomastikon, and explores the remarkable 300 forms and variants of the name Dimitri.

Видеото го претставува македонскиот лингвист и ономастичар Васил Дрвошанов, автор на речникот на лични имиња Ономастикон, и открива неверојатни 300 форми и варијанти на името Димитрија.

Abstract Submission Opens for ICOS 2027 in Vienna

 Abstract submission is now open for the XXIX International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS 2027), to be held in Vienna, Austria, from 16 to 20 August 2027.

Organised by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Geographical Society under the auspices of ICOS, the congress will bring together scholars from across the world to discuss the latest research in names and naming.

The congress theme, “Names as Condensed Narratives,” invites participants to explore how names can preserve and communicate stories about people, places, languages, identities, histories, and cultural perspectives. At the same time, proposals on the full range of onomastic research are welcome, including personal names, place names, commercial names, minority and Indigenous names, name changes, urban toponymy, naming in literature, name standardisation, names in social media, and many other topics.

Researchers may submit proposals for papers or posters of 200–300 words. Workshop and session proposals are also part of the congress programme.

The Vienna congress will be conducted in English and will include keynote lectures, parallel paper and poster sessions, excursions, a reception, and a social dinner. The venue will be the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna’s historic centre.

The deadline for paper and poster abstracts is scheduled for the end of October 2026.

Further information and abstract submission are available on the official congress website: ICOS 2027 Vienna

15 English Surnames: DNA Reveals Your Connection to the Norman Conquerors

 

Your last name might be the last surviving proof of the most consequential invasion in English history — and most people carry it across centuries without ever suspecting that it marks something ancient, aristocratic, and extraordinary sealed inside their own blood. Certain English surnames aren't just names, they're genetic conquest markers — and thanks to recent breakthroughs in DNA genealogy, researchers have now confirmed what Domesday Book entries, heraldic rolls, and centuries of Norman-English chronicle tradition always recorded: that certain bloodlines descend directly from the Norman conquerors who crossed the Channel in 1066, shattered the Anglo-Saxon world at Hastings, and rewrote the entire social, linguistic, and genetic fabric of England in a single generation. If you carry one of these 15 surnames, your ancestry may be more continental, more aristocratic, and more consequential than anything your family ever thought to claim.

UNGEGN Workshop in Santiago Advances Geographical-Names Interoperability

 Geographical names are far more than labels on a map. They link people, places, languages, cultural memory, public administration, statistics, emergency response, and increasingly also digital technologies and artificial intelligence.

The United Nations Statistics Division, through the Secretariat of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), recently convened a regional workshop in Santiago, Chile, on interoperability standards for the management of geographical names.

Experts from Latin America and the Caribbean exchanged national experiences and discussed how authoritative geographical-names data can support sustainable development, official cartography, public services, disaster management, cultural heritage, and geospatial integration. Contributions from Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, and Uruguay illustrated the diversity of national approaches.

Some countries are strengthening legal and institutional frameworks; others are developing national gazetteers, documenting Indigenous and historical names, improving data models, or creating digital platforms for public access and reuse.

A central message emerged clearly: geographical-names systems should be authoritative, interoperable, multilingual, culturally grounded, and reusable across government. Gazetteers must be understood not simply as lists of names, but as reliable data products connecting places, identifiers, statistics, services, and cultural knowledge.

The workshop also addressed linked data, SKOS/SKOS-XL, SHACL validation, persistent identifiers, and the preservation of multilingual and Indigenous toponymy. It provided an opportunity to pilot Zenith, a new tool developed in support of national priorities and the UNData initiative.

The discussions in Santiago confirmed the importance of continued regional cooperation through UNGEGN, its Divisions, and Working Groups. Sharing practical national experience remains essential for building geographical-names infrastructures that are both nationally authoritative and globally interoperable.

Further information is available here.