Onomastics Online

Onomastics Online is a series of online lectures dealing with important timely topics related to names and naming. Given by distinguished scholars from various academic backgrounds, the lectures demonstrate the importance and the multidisciplinary nature of onomastic research. Established in 2022, Onomastics Online also addresses the gap of sharing onomastic ideas, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the cancellations of scientific meetings.

The lectures can be followed either in real time via Zoom platform (see “Upcoming lectures” for Zoom links), with a possibility to participate the Q&A session afterwards, or afterwards on YouTube. Recordings of the lectures will be published on the ICOS YouTube channel usually within a couple of days. As the organizer of the series, ICOS also offers special lectures for its members only. If you want to become an ICOS member, please visit here.

Upcoming lectures

The lecture abstracts and details can be seen by clicking the lecture titles.

12 June 2025, 17:00 (CET): Amin Almuhanna: Numeric Codes in the Arabian Peninsula

9 October 2025, 17:00 (CET): Ivana Crljenko: Croatian exonyms: the use, projects, publications 

11 December 2025, 17:00 (CET): Rethabile Possa: Offspring of an Outcast: The Cultural Significance of Naming Among the Basotho

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Past lectures

The past lectures will be added here, with YouTube links to their recordings.

10 April 2025, 17:00 (CET): Dariusz Gierczak & Francis Harvey & Eric Losang: Studying toponym changes. Using gazetteers.net to compare differences in digital repositories (YouTube)

13 February 2025, 17:00 (CET): Pierre Gendreau-Hétu: Aux origines d’un pionnier de Nouvelle-France : distribution du nom Grondin et corrélation génétique (YouTube)

12 December 2024, 17:00 (CET): Jani de Lange: Onomastics and Sign Language: An Unexplored Terrain (YouTube)

10 April 2024, 17:00 (CET): Stéphane Gendron: Les animaux dans la toponymie française : entre réel et imaginaire (YouTube)

5 April 2024, 15:00 (CET): Gercsák Gábor: Principles of place naming in the new national atlas of Hungary (YouTube)

6 March 2024: Louis Hébert: Théories et méthodes pour l’analyse des noms propres dans les textes littéraires : synthèse (YouTube)

7 February 2024: Frédéric Giraut: Toponymie critique et Néotoponymie : Pour une théorisation (YouTube)

21 November 2023: Matjaž Geršič: Minority place-name regulations in Slovenia (YouTube)

25 October 2023: Lasse Hämäläinen: Name of the Year awards: Experiences from Finland (YouTube)

21 September 2023: Christian Galinski: Terminology – past, present and future: How to overcome barriers to content interoperability by means of a microcontent approach (YouTube)

9 May 2023: Emilia Aldrin: Names as resources for identity construction (YouTube)

20 April 2023: Sungjae Choo: Place Names as Brands: Academic Achievements and Further Issues (YouTube)

22 March 2023: Ángel Iglesias Ovejero: L’expérience onomastique: un dictionnaire des noms de personne dans la parémiologie espagnole (YouTube)

23 February 2023: Marília Ferreira: Onomastics in Parkatêjê language (YouTube, ABRALIN & ICOS joint lecture)

25 January 2023: André Xavier: Toponymic studies on Brazilian Sign Language (YouTube, ABRALIN & ICOS joint lecture)

7 December 2022: Jean Germain: Le dictionnaire PatRom : une autre manière de faire de l’anthroponymie. L’expérience du projet collectif panroman PatRom (YouTube)

10 November 2022: Rita Brdar-Szabó & Mario Brdar: Anthroponymy: More metaphor and metonymy than meets the eye (YouTube)

19 October 2022: Carole Hough: Metaphor and Metonymy in Names (YouTube)

27 September 2022: Elwys De Stefani: ”Speaking with names”: On the origins, aims and methods of Interactional Onomastics (YouTube, ABRALIN & ICOS join lecture)

18 May 2022: Richard Coates: Introducing The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP) (YouTube)

11 April 2022: Kimberly Klassen: The lexical load of proper names for second language readers of English (YouTube)

31 March 2022: Martin Thiering: Toponyms and Landmarks as Cognitive Maps in Dene Chipewyan and Eipomek (YouTube)

15 February 2022: Derek H. Alderman: Race, Memory, and Campus Place Name Reform: Strategies for Transforming the Classroom into a Toponymic Workspace (YouTube)