[Lingtyp] IPA for linguists' names

[Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm]

Hi,

As Martin Haspelmath has pointed out, I introduced the transcription of the authors’ name as the obligatory component of their information in “Linguistic Typology” a few years ago and have repeatedly talked about this initiative in various contexts. I have also tried to get a few other journals to do this, but to no avail so far. However, as the President (now Vice-President) of the SLE, I also started the discussion about adding this information to the database of the SLE members and in the book of abstracts.

There are many important reasons for doing this. I can talk a lot about this from a personal experience.

All the best,
Maria (Masha)

On 5 Sep 2026, at 17:57, Yuri Koryakov via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:

Dear colleagues,
Many of us have encountered a situation where we need to pronounce the name of a linguist, but we don’t know how. Or we need to write down someone’s name in another script (Cyrillic, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, etc.), and this again requires correct pronunciation.
As a result, you have to look for pronunciation instructions on personal webpages, listen to recordings on YouTube, ask friends, and so on, but it is much more convenient when such information is collected in one place.
To do this, I created the editable list of names and their transcriptions here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zFKZp2e6dvfw_JQqX7904xY1GnqOwaopD2gnb3ytilA/edit?gid=0#gid=0
The General Guide “How to add your name to the list” is available in the Info tab ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zFKZp2e6dvfw_JQqX7904xY1GnqOwaopD2gnb3ytilA/edit?gid=863783271#gid=863783271  ).
Additional difficulties that this project allows to solve:
a) distinguishing the surname from other names (necessary for the correct compilation of bibliographies and especially relevant for languages with a different order of components in the name or for names consisting of more than two words)
b) indicating gender pronouns – he / she / they – useful in many languages when you need to, for example, refer to the author.
If you are in doubt whether you should indicate yourself, you can use the following criterion as a working one: if you have published at least one article or had one presentation at a conference, you can safely provide your name. Also if people pronounce your name differently from how you’d like it to be pronounced, or if you’ve ever been asked how to pronounce your name, that’s a hint that you should provide that information.
If you can’t/don’t want to add your data to the sheet yourself, you can send it to me by email . Also write if you have any questions/comments/suggestions etc.
Yours,
Yuri Koryakov



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Prof. Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
Dept. of linguistics, Stockholm University
Editor-in-chief of “Linguistic Typology”,
President of Societas Linguistica Europaea,
tamm at ling.su.se<mailto:tamm at ling.su.se>
www.su.se/english/profiles/tamm-1.182300










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