Throwback Thursday Series - American Given Names, A

Hello, readers!

For the next few Thursdays, I'll be focusing on a book I picked up recently - American Given Names, by George R. Stewart. Stewart was a professor in English at my alma mater, UC Berkeley, and published this book on names and name history shortly before his death. Since I'm always interested in onomastics, the study of names, I picked up a copy at the Berkeley library!

While it's unclear whether Stewart studied name statistics, he included some of the most common names in the United States (complete with opinions). These blog posts will focus on names I haven't heard of (or heard much of). So, in honor or fellow Cal Bear George, let's begin!

Abiel - "God is the father"

Abijah - "Jehovah is the father"

Admire - virtue name

Adonijah - "God is my Lord"

Agur - "gatherer"

Alethea - "truth"

Alfarata - modern invented name

Almon - "German"

Amariah - "God has spoken"

Amasa - "burden bearer"

Ammi - "my people"

Amzi - "my strength"

Antipas - "like his father"

Aquila - "acorn" or "eagle"

Archelaus - "chief of the people"

Artemas - unknown origin, possibly "gift of Artemis"

Asahel - "God acts"

Asaph - "collector"

Asarelah - "joined is God"

Asenath - unknown origin, possibly "devoted to the goddess Neith"

Ashbel - "man of Baal"

Azariah - "God is his helper"

Azel - "noble"

None of these are in the US top 1000! The ones most likely to make the list in my opinion are Abijah, Amariah, and Ashbel. My favorites are Amzi and Azariah. 

Onomastics

Hello, readers!

Since becoming more involved in the name community, I've wondered - is there a field of study that focuses on names? I'm an academic at heart - BA in History of Art, French Lit minor, Dec 2013, UC Berkeley - and I'd love to find classes or some kind of program to study names.

However, I haven't been too successful. Here are some of the sites I've come across:

First, to Wikipedia!

Onomastics - An excellent definition, but not too much more information.

Anthroponymy - More specific in what I'm interested in, but still not great.

George R. Stewart - Cool, a Berkeley reference. Interesting fact - he "prompted the National Weather Service to use personal names to designate storms".

Now to societies!

American Name Society - "The American Name Society was founded in 1951 to promote onomastics, the study of names and naming practices, both in the United States and abroad. It is a non-profit organization that seeks to find out what really is in a name, and to investigate cultural insights, settlement history, and linguistic characteristics revealed in names."

English Place-Name Society - "The EPNS was established in 1923 to conduct a county-by-county survey of the place-names of England." It's connected to the University of Nottingham, so I'm glad to see an academic reference.

Guild of One-Name Studies - "The Guild will strengthen its position as the centre of excellence for surname studies by educating the worldwide genealogical community in one-name studies and empowering members to share their knowledge and expertise." Genealogy and surnames, but not too much about first names.

International Council of Onomastic Sciences - Excellent! Academia! Wish I had known about the conference earlier, I would love to attend their symposium in Paris this December.

Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland - "A society devoted to the study of names (place-names, personal names, and other names) from linguistic, historical, and sociological perspectives". So I'm seeing a lot of conferences, but no real singular departments. I guess I should have expected names to be more interdisciplinary!

Dictionary of Names from Medieval European Sources - An excellent site that I discussed at length on my blog yesterday.

But are there classes?

Academic Courses on Onomastics - This thorough PDF lists classes in Great Britain, Croatia, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden and the Czech Republic - at least, as of 2002. I do notice that many of the courses fall under the relevant language departments - Scandinavian, English, etc.

But nothing in the USA!

Any more information on onomastics and its academic presence would be really appreciated! I'm wondering if working with a language or literature department and creating an interdisciplinary Masters or PhD in Anthroponymy would be possible?