Katrine Bechsgaard

I am a Postdoc and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley. My research focuses on sociolinguistics and socioonomastics – on how language and names are used in and reflect contemporary society. I am interested in naming practices, especially in terms of how name choices are related to identity. I have studied Danish parents’ choice of first names for children, written a book examining cultural, sociological, linguistic, and psychological aspects of naming, and my current project (supported by the Carlsberg Foundation) focuses on surname choices, family practices, gender, and identity.