Complementing Lawson's 1987 bibliography, Personal Names and Naming, this new volume provides close to 2,200 entries, reflecting an explosion of research on names and naming. Arranged into topical sections, a large portion of the book is devoted to ethnic, national, and cultural names. Other sections cover such topics as the Bible and names, popular names, and psychology and names. The book provides a valuable resource for students and scholars concerned with the study of names.
This comprehensive bibliography is a follow-up to the 1987 Personal Names and Naming which contained about 1,200 items. This all-new bibliography contains about 2,200 items reflecting the tremendous advances made in onomastics during the past few years. This unusual work explores the many disciplines affecting personal names, from the Bible to statistics, and considers how names are selected and bestowed.
The entries are grouped alphabetically in 47 major subject categories, and the annotations are designed to show the user the key ideas included. The category chosen for each item reflects the most salient feature relating to onomastics, and since most entries have more than one possible category, all are cross-referenced, including author, date, title, edition used or name of journal, place, publisher, pages, annotation, and presence of references, tables, or figures. This bibliography, along with its predecessor Personal Names and Naming, provides a single source for locating the relevant literature, and reflects the tremendous growth in research on ethnic names and topics dealing with nicknames and feminine aspects of names (change, law, marital aspects). It is an essential addition to all libraries and will be an indispensable tool of onomasticians, students, scholars, and interested individuals.
About the Author: EDWIN D. LAWSON is a past president of the American Name Society. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the State University of New York College at Fredonia and author of Personal Names and Naming (Greenwood, 1987), and numerous other books in the fields of onomastics and psychology.
