The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
Gina from Athens, Texas, wonders if there’s any rhyme or reason to the names we give to the denizens of a particular place. There are a few general rules for creating demonyms, the names applied to the denizens of a particular locale. George R...
Andrea in San Diego, California, noticed a new restaurant with a name spelled in a curious way. Is there a term for this kind of intentional misspelling used in advertising? Onomastics is the study of naming, and a good source for information about...
Many common English surnames–such as Taylor, Miller, Shoemaker, Smith, and many others–tell a story about life in the Middle Ages. Two good books on the study of names, also known as onomastics, are The Surname Detective and a Dictionary...
namie n.— «“Eighty years from now, the names we choose will be the sound of a generation, the stamp of an era.” The annual list was the brainchild of a Social Security actuary who hoped to bring more citizens to the agency’s Web...
namerology n.— «“Eighty years from now, the names we choose will be the sound of a generation, the stamp of an era.” The annual list was the brainchild of a Social Security actuary who hoped to bring more citizens to the agency’s...