In deaf culture and

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign ...

, a sign name (or a name sign) is a special sign that is used to uniquely identify a person (a

name A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A persona ...

American Sign Language

In the American deaf community and

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expre ...

(ASL), there are cultural norms regarding ASL name signs; for example, they must be agreed upon by the named person and the broader

deaf community Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

. This ensures that no one else in the community already has the same sign name or that the same sign has a different meaning. Until a person receives a sign name, the person's name is usually fingerspelled, rendering a letter-by-letter representation of a person's English-language name.Ilaria Parogni
What Matters in a Name Sign?
''New York Times'' (July 16, 2021). Linguist Samuel James Supalla identifies name signs as having dual functions: to identify persons and to signify "membership in the Deaf community." Different deaf cultures have different customs around sign names. For example, in the deaf American community, sign names are usually subdivided into two naming systems: descriptive (DNS) and arbitrary (ANS). Descriptive names manually illustrate descriptions of the person (for example, personality or physical appearance) and are conveyed through classifier

handshape In sign languages, handshape, or dez, refers to the distinctive configurations that the hands take as they are used to form words. In Stokoe terminology it is known as the , an abbreviation of ''designator''. Handshape is one of five components ...

s, and an arbitrary name sign corresponds to initials (or to the first letter of a spoken name) applied to one or more locations. A third category, nontraditional name signs, combine elements of the arbitrary and descriptive. An ANS sign is usually just a unique sign without other meaning, but there may be family patterns, like all the children in a family having names signed at the chin. Name signs may change over the course of a user's life. While name signs were originally exclusive to deaf people, some hearing people who use ASL and interact with the deaf community also have name signs. Prominent individuals with no direct connection to deaf culture are sometimes also assigned name signs; for example,

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

, and

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

all have name signs. Contemporary non-deaf figures, such as elected officials, are sometimes also given name signs. For example, after becoming Vice President-elect of the United States,

Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th vice president of the United States. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well ...

was assigned a name sign consistently of a rotation of the wrist completed concurrently with the unfurling of the thumb, index and middle finger; the sign was partly derived from the sign for

lotus flower ''Nelumbo nucifera'', also known as sacred lotus, Laxmi lotus, Indian lotus, or simply lotus, is one of two extant species of aquatic plant in the family Nelumbonaceae. It is sometimes colloquially called a water lily, though this more often re ...

(which is what "Kamala" means in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...

) and from the number three (representing Harris as the first vice president to be a woman, African American, and Asian American).

American Sign Language

References

Further reading