Names in Dialect: Introduction

Abstract

C oals to Newcastle. Roses by different names. Does any reader of Names have to be told that onomastics and dialectology are kissing cousins, often bedfellows, sometimes two sides of the same coin?If so, let that improbably obtuse reader look at any ordinary issue of Names; there will plentifully appear examples of the link between the study of names and the study of language variation. In 1983 alone, and not counting book reviews, Names had articles on geographic variation of nationalistic place names in the United States; upstate vs. downstate in New York; the American terms creek, run and hollow; Celtic names in the American North and South; surnames in the Southern United States; geographical spread of English place-name surnames; changing place names in New Mexico, and the development of ethnic epithets from personal names.All of these topics would have been equally at home in American Speech, journal of the American Dialect Society, whose readers recently have been treated to studies of "Criminal Monickers" and "The Hairbender Beauty Salon de Paris of Ethel." Substantial works on names have likewise appeared in the monograph series Publication of the American Dialect Society, from Frederic G. Cassidy's exemplary The Place Names of Dane County, Wisconsin (No.7, 1947) to Virginia O. Foscue's The Place Names of Sumter County, Alabama (No. 65, 1978).Names and dialect. Which field is the handmaiden, which the maid; which is the branch and which the clinging vine; which the host and which the parasite, may sometimes seem at issue, but it is more often a matter of whether the left hand should serve the right, or which hat a scholar cares to put on.And indeed, the practitioner is often the same. As readers of this journal well know, American scholarly interest in names took much of its impetus from members of the American Dialect Society, some of whom helped with the birth of the American Name Society. Five different scholars have been independently chosen as presidents of both societies -namely, Kemp

Male sexuality: Feminist interpretations

“…As the editors of The Sexuality of Men suggest, men are often 'emotionally illiterate' 45 and rely on women to translate or mediate their emotional lives. 46 This occurs to such an extent, that Phyllis Chesler observes that, 'Men's need for maternal compassion and approval is so great, so unconscious, so pervasive, that its shadow fell across every relationship or encounter I've ever had with men'.…”