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'No southerner speaks about their region without mentioning family.' --William R. Ferris (1) FAMILY The family saga as a literary form is common in much southern literature. Families are viewed [...]

The history of given names, and what they can tell us about individual and group identities, has attracted much attention in recent years. The existence of specifically Protestant given names is well documented in the early modern period, when they served as important markers of religious identity. This article looks at the evolution of given names in eighteenth-century Paris and the extent to which they continued to operate in this way. It suggests that given names provide some evidence of resistance to religious persecution, yet they also reveal an important change in the way religious identity was marked, a change that underpinned the growth of religious toleration in the city. DOI 10.1215/00161071-2009-020

The degree of acculturation and ethnic maintenance in terms of names given to children of immigrant parents in Germany is studied. Acculturation in terms of name giving depends on cultural boundaries, socio-structural integration, inter-ethnic networks, and religion.

This study was designed to examine professional human resource managers' recommendations and inferences about prototypical applicants who had identical qualifications, in which the presence of periods of unemployment and name (feminine, masculine) of applicants were manipulated. Results indicate that although overall income for female applicants was less than male applicants in some conditions, male applicants were penalized and evaluated more harshly than female applicants when they had experienced periods of unemployment. Specifically, male applicants with employment gaps were seen as less committed and as less hirable than their female counterparts. Overall, male applicants were less likely to be recommended for an interview, and, when they experienced multiple gaps, they were less likely to be recommended for further consideration. KEY WORDS: employment gaps; stereotypes; gender; human resources; discrimination; unemployment; hiring decisions.

A study of the naming patterns used for 648 children in 322 American families provided mixed support for a number of hypotheses that are derived from the propositions that namesaking (the naming of a child after another person) functions as advertisement of genetic kinship when it may be in doubt and as a strategy to procure future investment of resources from the father and other relatives. Males and second-born children with older sisters were more likely to be namesaked, and birth order was a significant predictor of the probability of being namesaked for males. First-borns were more likely to be named after a patrilineal relative, but there was no tendency for children born early in a marriage to be namesaked more frequently than children born after many years of marriage. Parents who themselves were namesaked were more likely to namesake their own children.

A predominately European American sample of 197 middle-class college students rated married women and men with hypenated surnames on the Big Five personality factors (R. Lippa, 1991), the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (J. T. Spence & R. L. Helmereich, 1978), the adjectives 'masculine' and 'feminine,' and 12 adjective phrases reflecting different aspects of marriage. Both men and women perceived women and men with hyphenated last names as different from other married people. In comparison with the average married woman, the woman with a hyphenated name was perceived as more friendly, good-natured, industrious, and intellectually curious. She was also perceived as well educated and as more likely to have a career. Men with hyphenated surnames were also perceived as accommodating and good-natured, and viewed as being both nurturing and committed to their marriage. Women and men with hyphenated names were generally perceived as having higher levels of both instrumental and expressive traits than other married people. Women appear to have more positive perceptions than men, particularly of the man with a hyphenated name. The results suggest that college students have generally positive perceptions of married people with hyphenated names. KEY WORDS: married names; hyphenated names; married women; married men.

Research has shown that a woman's selected title of address affects perceiver impressions of her (e.g., Dion, 1987). This study adds to our understanding of the effects of chosen identity labels on perceptions of women by examining impressions as a function of a married woman's surname use. A total of 222 female and male students at a private university read a brief description of a woman who, at the time of her marriage, decided to take her husband's name, keep her maiden name, or use a hyphenated name. Participants rated the stimulus person on 51 traits along 7-point rating scales. The woman who took her husband's name was perceived as less agentic and more communal than women who either kept their maiden name or hyphenated their name.

INTRODUCTION "We've got to talk about this name deal." - Hillary Rodham, speaking to Bill Clinton about changing her name to his before his 1982 campaign for Governor of Arkansas. […]

Daniel is Hebrew for 'God is my judge.' Kevin is Gaelic for 'comely.' Amanda is Latin for 'worthy of being loved.' Peter is Greek for 'stone.' In the dark backward [...]

Personal names seem not to be of major interest to Australian Aboriginal anthropology, and studies on this topic, already pointed out by Francoise Dussart in 1988, are relatively sparse.(1) And […]

Three Kiowa men who bore the name Tohausen, or Little Bluff, in the nineteenth century are frequently confused with each other in the literature, contributing to the difficulty of identifying the role of individual agency in Southern Plains history. Each of the Tohausens is here identified and their genealogical relationships are established. Distinguishing roles and events by which they can be differentiated are defined, and the passage of significant items of material culture among them is traced, including shield and tipi designs. A discussion of Kiowa naming practices provides background for understanding how the name originated and was transmitted. Keywords: Kiowa; Southern Plains history; naming practices; material culture; Little Bluff

An analysis of the naming convention used by 929 married women and their adult children shows that about 1.4% of the married women and 4.6% of their children retained their maiden name. While age does not affect the retention of the maiden name, educational levels and career goals do. The use of the maiden name by the mother increases the chances of her daughter doing the same but has no effect on her son's wife. Most of the women use their maiden names as a middle name.

Calamity Jane's moniker signified to the Old West the havoc she wrought on efforts to categorize masculine and feminine. Though the name itself probably derived from other causes, it indicates the turmoil she wrought by transgressing, but not inverting, gender distinctions, by blending a distinctly male brand of courage and prowess with female nurturing and sexual desires. In many ways, she exemplifies the changing West of her time, with its mobile frontiers and borders and interrelated stories.

This research examines concentration and similarity in the first name distributions of African Americans and whites resident in Mississippi in 1910. Data are drawn from the Public Use Sample of the 1910 Census, with names added from microfilm copies of original Census manuscripts. We find little difference in the degree of concentration of the name distributions and only modest dissimilarity in name choice. Multivariate analysis using age as a proxy for period of name assignment (birth cohort) indicates that racial differentiation in name choice increased over the period 1870 to 1910 primarily as a result of changes in the name choices of whites. We discuss these results in conjunction with the recent work of Lieberson and Bell (1992) on contemporary racial differences in naming patterns. Lieberson and Bell (1992) argue that African Americans in the contemporary period emphasize group differences by choosing 'African' or 'African sounding' names. In Mississippi in the period between the abolition of slavery and 1910, we argue that whites distanced themselves from African Americans by choosing increasingly the 'whitest' names (e.g., those disproportionately chosen by whites). Changing naming patterns are not orchestrated group responses. Instead, they reflect emergent cultural responses to fundamental social change.