Names, Naming, and the Law

Across many social and commercial domains, governments regulate the official names used to identify individuals, groups, places, companies & products, and even diseases. This innovative volume investigates the relationship between names and the law, with its significant implications for identity (individual, familial, race, ethnicity, gender, species, brand & product industry, etc.) and status (social, scientific, economic, and political).

I. M. Nick introduces the state of the art on this interdisciplinary topic¾ providing a diachronic and synchronic view of onomastics and the law¾ and expert contributors examine seminal Anglo-American legal cases to demonstrate how name polices relate to broader questions of power, privilege, and politics. Each chapter offers an overview of key issues in onomastics and language policy across multiple geo-cultural contexts, and applies the interdisciplinary insights to real-world policies.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars of legal linguistics, forensic linguistics, onomastics, language policy, and cultural studies.

Author Biography

I. M. Nick holds a BA (Germanics); BSc (Clinical/Abnormal Psychology); MA (German Linguistics); MSc (Forensic and Investigative Psychology); PhD and the German “Habilitation” (English Linguistics). Her onomastic research focusses on anthroponymy, identity, and language-policy. A past President of the American Name Society (ANS), she’s Editor-in-Chief of Names: A Journal of Onomastics.