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TOMAS HEDBERG his is a report on a project that began while I was working on another project with a broader focus. That project, called "Documentation of Old and Regional Signs and the History of the Deaf," was financed by the Swedish National Association of the Deaf and its Department of Sign Language. The objective was to document old and regional signs by videotaping interviews with deaf senior citizens, who were asked to relate memories of their childhood, school days, working life, activities in the deaf club, and so on. In addition to this work, I was interested in name signs and was therefore curious to see what my informants' name signs were. I also began to make notes of name signs I encountered. Name signs are signs for the proper names of individuals. Often they are derived from certain characteristics of a person. After a while, I noticed that there seemed to be different types of name signs. I became interested in finding out the origin of name signs, how they are created, and their use. Even later I noticed that certain types of name signs and their function change with time. Only a few papers have been published on this subject. Nationally we have Fondelius (1916) and Osterberg (1916). Internationally there is Supalla (1985). The name signs of people of earlier generations are mainly known by elderly people. Unfortunately, these signs are gradually lost and cannot survive from generation to generation unless they are documented in some way, either by means of video recordings or with a special notation system. The aim of this presentation is partly to account for the origin and use of name signs and partly to describe a classification system for name signs. So far, I have documented 3,114 name signs for a total of 2,671 individuals. The difference between the number of people and the number of name signs (443) is owing to the fact that one person may have two or more variations of a name sign, or two or more completely different name signs. Translated into English by Anna-Lena Nilsson. Name Signs in Swedish Sign Language How Name Signs Are Acquired Name signs can be said to form a part of our culture. The tradition of deaf people giving name signs to each other has been used for generations, and is still in use. In the past, when deaf children in schools for deaf students wanted to say something about a friend or teacher but did not know his or her name, they described the characteristics of that person with a sign, perhaps relating to clothing or behavior. Gradually, as the same description was repeatedly used for a person, an established sign developed. At some schools, older pupils-"sponsors"-took care of the beginners. They told them what to do and how to do it, for example, to use their personal towels and toothbrushes , make their beds, and polish their shoes. The beginners also had to memorize their school admittance number because clothes and shoes were marked with this number . The sponsors also used to "baptize" newcomers in sign language. One little boy with a blue and white sailor suit was given the name sign BLUE/THREE-FINGERS-ONTHE -UPPER-ARM-MOVING-IN-A-V-SHAPE. In this manner, new pupils were given their name signs. Earlier Literature As I mentioned earlier, there is not a great deal of material published on name signs. The oldest documents on name signs are a passage in a book Teckenspraket (Osterberg 1916),1 and an article in the magazine Tidning for dovstumma (Fondelius, 1916), which is also printed in the book Kontakt (Nordheim, 1972, pp. 53-55). In his article, Gunnar Fondelius says: Among the deaf and dumb, given names and family names are rarely used when referring to a person who is deaf and dumb. These names would have to be fingerspelled by using the manual alphabet, which is too slow, and often they do not know the person's Christian name. So much more are the sign language names remembered. Pupils at our schools for the deaf are given a name in sign language as soon as they enter school, derived from some characteristic in their appearance, dress, manner, or something similar. This name sign is then kept for the rest of the student's life. (Fondelius, 1916) Name Signs Today and Yesterday It is not known how long name signs have existed. They may have existed since before...

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