Names of the Year for 2022

Name development is my profession; keeping track of interesting names is my avocation. And so when each year winds to a close, I like to look back over the upper-case names that stood out over the past year. This year’s list includes brand names; personal names; nicknames; a place name; and the names of two animals, one long extinct and the other recently defunct.

Bellingcat. The open-source intelligence organization Bellingcat has done important investigations this year using geolocation and other tools to combat Russian disinformation, far-right conspiracies, and Elon Musk’s claims about private-jet tracking. When I wrote about Bellingcat in March, I focused on its interesting name, whose roots lie in an Aesop’s fable.

Dobbs. Just as the landmark 1973 case became known as Roe — an abbreviation of Roe v. Wade — this year’s landmark decision overruling Roe and undoing the federal right to abortion is known by the name of its plaintiff. But who is Dobbs? He’s Thomas E. Dobbs, state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health, who appealed a lower court’s decision striking down the state’s Gestational Age Act. Dobbs, acting on behalf of the state, asked the US Supreme Court not only to uphold the law but also to declare Roe unconstitutional. It did so on June 24, 2022. Read my May 2022 post about abortion rights.