37.2710, Calls: Genealogy - "Special Issue: Names and Naming in Contact Situations" (Jrnl)

Wed Aug 19 10:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2710. Wed Aug 19 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2710, Calls: Genealogy - "Special Issue: Names and Naming in Contact Situations" (Jrnl)

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Date: 18-Aug-2026
From: Maryann Parada [mparada1 at csub.edu]
Subject: Genealogy - "Special Issue: Names and Naming in Contact Situations" (Jrnl)

Journal: Genealogy
Issue: Names and Naming in Contact Situations

Special issue on "Names and Naming in Contact Situations"
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/genealogy/special_issues/Y2G62NR7WB
Names are powerful social and cultural resources through which
individuals and communities negotiate identity, belonging, memory,
power, and place (Ainiala & Östman 2017; Aldrin 2016). This special
issue seeks to advance research in socio-onomastics, with particular
attention to the social dimensions of personal and place names and
naming practices in multilingual, multicultural, and transnational
contexts. Onomastic research has increasingly shown the ways naming
practices, including historical, both reflect and shape social
relations, language ideologies, and processes of inclusion and
exclusion (e.g. Beké 2022; Benor & Chandler 2024; Coates 2012;
Fernández Juncal 2018; Parada 2020; Pennesi 2019; Rodríguez 2022; Sue
2025).
Advances in critical toponymy have deepened our awareness of place
names as socio-politically contested instruments of power, identity,
memory, and territorialization. This work has moved the field beyond
descriptive accounts to more interpretive analyses of struggles over
space, identity, and historical representation. For example,
Rose-Redwood et al. (2010) argue that place names should be understood
as forms of toponymic inscription through which political actors
materialize particular spatial narratives and social meanings. Recent
scholarship has also highlighted the diverse scales, actors, and
motivations involved in naming processes. In a review of urban
toponymic research, Rusu (2021) demonstrates how street names, on
their face mere navigational tools, are resources through which
states, local authorities, and communities negotiate collective
memory, heritage, and political legitimacy. Within the growing
sociolinguistics subfield of linguistic landscape research, recent
calls to consider “revitalizing its onomastic roots” (Kallen 2023:
250) show promise for exciting new interdisciplinary research
directions on place names in situations of linguistic and cultural
contact. Such directions include questions at the intersection of
place names and personal names (e.g. Parada 2021; Regan 2022), as well
as around the role of linguistic landscape in toponymic salience and
attachment (Kostanski 2016).
Likewise, personal names research has focused on accounting for the
complexity of forces that shape both formal and informal naming
practices. Personal names function as key resources for the
construction and often moment-to-moment negotiation of individual and
collective identities, reflecting factors such as ethnicity, religion,
gender, social class, migration, and linguistic affiliation (Ainiala &
Östman 2017; Aldrin 2016). Scholars have shown how naming choices are
influenced by language ideologies, family traditions, globalization,
and transnational mobility, while also serving as sites where
belonging and difference are negotiated (Benor & Chandler 2024; Parada
2020). Research has further highlighted the role of names in processes
of migration, standardization, resistance, and cultural maintenance in
multilingual and diasporic communities (Pennesi 2019). How
individuals, families, and ethnic groups negotiate multiple and
intersecting linguistic and cultural affiliations through names
continues to constitute a fascinating line of inquiry, while there is
also a specific need to explore these questions in online spaces and
social media (i.e. digital anthroponomy). Comparative and longitudinal
perspectives are especially important to better understand how naming
practices evolve across generations and sociopolitical contexts.
We invite contributions that examine how names are created, used,
contested, transformed, and interpreted in contexts characterized by
migration, language and cultural contact, minority language
maintenance, colonization and decolonization, displacement,
globalization, and digital communication. Contributions focused on
Hispanic personal and place names in minority and diasporic settings
are particularly welcome.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Personal and place naming practices among minority and
heritage-language communities
- Names and identity construction in diasporic contexts
- Place names, linguistic landscapes, and toponymic politics
- Intersections between anthroponomastics/anthroponomy and
toponomastics/toponymy
- Naming and language revitalization efforts
- Indigenous naming practices and decolonial approaches to onomastics
- Ethnonyms, variable use and perceptions
- Name changes and adaptations across languages and writing systems
- Names and social stratification, ethnicity, gender, religion, or
class
- Naming practices in borderlands and contact zones
- Digital and social media naming practices
- Commemorative naming and collective memory
- Names and language pedagogies
- Methodological innovations in socio-onomastic research
- Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches linking onomastics with
sociolinguistics, anthropology, geography, history, and cultural
studies
Interested authors are invited to submit a proposed title and an
abstract of 200–250 words summarizing their intended contribution.
Please send it to the guest editor (Maryann Parada; mparada1 at csub.edu)
or to the Genealogy editorial office (genealogy at mdpi.com). Abstracts
will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring
proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts
will undergo double-blind peer-review.
Tentative completion schedule*:
- Abstract submission deadline: December 15, 2026
- Notification of abstract acceptance: January 5, 2027
- Full manuscript deadline: February 28, 2027
*Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as
soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue
website.

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics
                     Translation

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