This article examines the historical names of railways in Ukraine by employing cultural-geographic and critical approaches. More specifically, this research describes semantic categories of railway names in Ukraine and highlights how railway names are explicitly or implicitly used as political instruments and forms of discursive power. The empirical part of the research is based on a database of the names of the railways in Ukraine throughout the history of the national railway network. The data was collected using modern reviews and directories, media screening, as well as archive sources. Throughout history most of the names of Ukrainian railways were not commemorative and performed primarily orientation function. Still, most of the names had potential political implications. Focusing on certain cases of politically-driven renaming of railways in Ukraine, including the ongoing project of “Iron Ukrainization”, this research demonstrates how place names related to transport networks may function as geospatial projections of hegemonic political power, by legitimizing specific centers of political power in the linguistic landscape of a country.

Tempest: Hurricane Naming and American Culture. By Liz Skilton. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2023. Pp. 320 (Paperback). $40.00. ISBN 13: 978-0-8071-7996-3.

This paper demonstrates how to leverage the GeoNames data for seeking patterns in toponymic data using the software package ‘toponym’, which we wrote for the R computational environment. After discussing a distinction between particularistic and pattern-seeking approaches to toponymics, we go on to characterize the data of GeoNames, which are particularly appropriate for the latter type of approach. Then, we present two cases studies. The first case study is on Xincan place names in Guatemala, and the second is on Slavic place names in eastern Germany. These explorations support our hypothesis that toponymics may benefit from new computational tools.

Enterprises, be they businesses, nonprofit organizations, or organized events, need memorable names to differentiate themselves from other enterprises. In the United States, geographical panhandles have provided a distinguishing word around which to build an enterprise name that appeals to people having affection for or a connection to a particular panhandle. This essay seeks to uncover the extent of the panhandle-naming phenomenon, trace panhandle namegiving back through time, and create a corpus of panhandle-named enterprises. Data collection tools involved standard online searches; Google’s predictive searching algorithm; business and nonprofit searching tools on the websites of the states’ secretaries of state; and several subscription databases, including Newspapers.com. Florida’s panhandle has inspired, thus far, more than 2,400 panhandle-named enterprises, with Texas coming in second, at 1,600. Four other states turned up with more than two hundred each: Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. In total, the research yielded a from-scratch corpus of just over 6,200 panhandle-named enterprises.

This study delves into the social gender dynamics embedded within Vietnamese personal names and highlights their significance as indicators of cultural identity and societal norms. Vietnamese naming conventions display distinct gender markers that mirror cultural expectations and familial roles. Using firsthand archival data compiled from the 2006 high school and university entrance examinations, encompassing nearly one million names, this research addresses how gender distinctions are integrated into Vietnamese personal names and identifies the specific linguistic and cultural characteristics that differentiate male and female names. It also considers the historical, cultural, and social influences shaping naming patterns across generations. By analyzing the structure of Vietnamese names, such as gender markers, middle names, and compound names, the study reveals the intricate gender representations within Vietnamese naming practices. Ultimately, this research enhances our understanding of how names encapsulate the interplay between gender, culture, and identity in Viet Nam.

This article explores how three 21st century Swedish language textbooks represent gendered and cultural diversity for 10-year-old pupils through the use of names. The study is inspired by a Progressive Discourse Analytic approach (cf Hughes 2018), which aims to identify limiting representations (re)constructing prejudice or bias as well as potentially emancipatory representations offering readers to imagine diversity in new ways. The study focuses on primary school textbooks and an age group that has received little attention in previous research, but is of great importance, since pupils’ own experience of the world at this point are still limited, giving authoritative textbooks a stronger influence (Weninger & Williams 2005). By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study discusses who is treated as important enough to be known by name and which cultural and gendered identities seem emphasized or hidden in the construction of diversity. In addition, the study discusses the specific role of naming as tool for inclusion in a multi-semiotic discursive textbook landscape.

This study explores the pervasive impact of name bias on Kurdish-origin individuals and Syrian Arab refugees within Turkey's socio-political landscape. Using quantitative methodology, the research developed a Likert-scale questionnaire through exploratory factor analysis, identifying five key factors: Personal Experiences, Institutional Practices, Societal Perceptions, Personal Attitudes, and Occupational Settings. Grounded in social identity theory and Allport's contact hypothesis, the study investigates the influence of name bias on socioeconomic opportunities, cultural integration, and psychological well-being. The findings show significant disparities in perceived name bias across ethnicities, genders, and educational levels, with Kurdish-origin individuals experiencing higher bias in personal and institutional contexts. Further, this study highlights the intersectionality of name bias and its amplification by societal structures. It provides empirical insights from a non-Western context, advocating for systemic policy, education, and workplace changes to reduce name-based discrimination. Finally, this study contributes to the field of onomastics, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions to create an inclusive society where one's name does not constrain identity and opportunities.

The present study investigated, using a questionnaire, how people feel (i.e., irritated, offended, and sad) when their own name was misprocessed (i.e., forgotten, uttered after a hesitation, mispronounced, or replaced by another person’s name) during a conversation with friends and close colleagues. Participants reported relatively low negative feelings after such naming incidents. Nevertheless, they reported being more irritated and offended than sad for all the incidents. They felt comparable levels of irritation and offense, except for mispronunciations that caused more irritation. Although participants reported weak negative feelings, they reported reacting often to all incidents, either by reminding the interlocutor of their names or by correcting them. The contrast between weak ratings of negative feelings and high ratings of reminding and correction shows that using the correction as the only indicator of bother when the own name is misprocessed can be misleading. Finally, the intensity of irritation triggered by incidents with the own name was negatively related with the participants’ propensity to misprocess other peoples’ names, but was not related with scores at the Rosenberg self-esteem scale nor with the level of self-symbolic value of the own name.

At the start of each calendar year, the members of the NAMES Editorial Board review the articles that appeared in the previous volume to determine the winners of the Best Article of the Year. After careful reading of each article, the publications are judged across the following three criteria: (1) creativity and originality; (2) potential scholarly contribution to onomastics; and (3) writing style and organization. Per secret ballot, the reviewers independently select the three publications which they have assigned the highest ratings for each of these criteria. The ballots are collected and tallied by the NAMES Editor-in-Chief. In years past, the outcome of the election has been so close that it was necessary to have several rounds of voting to finally determine the top three papers. This year, however, the tallies yielded three clear winners. Although the onomastic subject area for each of the top papers was radically different, all three had one common feature which segregated them from the rest of the year’s submissions. Each demonstrated a remarkably innovative methodological approach which the Board members determined had the potential of making a significant and lasting contribution to future onomastic research.