InDeaf culture andsign language, asign name (or aname sign) is a special sign that is used to uniquely identify a person (aname).
In the American deaf community andAmerican Sign Language (ASL), there are cultural norms regardingASL name signs; for example, they must be agreed upon by the named person and the broaderdeaf community. 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 usuallyfingerspelled,[1] rendering a letter-by-letter representation of a person's English-language name.[2]
LinguistSamuel James Supalla identifies name signs as having dual functions: to identify persons and to signify "membership in the Deaf community."[2] Different deaf cultures have different customs around sign names. For example, in thedeaf American community, sign names are usually subdivided into two naming systems: descriptive (DNS) and arbitrary (ANS).[3] Descriptive names manually illustrate descriptions of the person (for example, personality or physical appearance) and are conveyed throughclassifierhandshapes, and an arbitrary name sign corresponds to initials (or to the first letter of a spoken name) applied to one or more locations.[3][2] A third category, nontraditional name signs, combine elements of the arbitrary and descriptive.[2] 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.[3] Name signs may change over the course of a user's life.[2]
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.[2] Prominent individuals with no direct connection to deaf culture are sometimes also assigned name signs; for example,George Washington,Abraham Lincoln,William Shakespeare, andVincent van Gogh all have name signs.[2] Contemporary non-deaf figures, such as elected officials, are sometimes also given name signs.[2] For example, after becomingVice President-elect of the United States,Kamala Harris was assigned a name sign consisting 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 forlotus flower (which is what "Kamala" means inSanskrit) and from the number three (representing Harris as the first vice president to be a woman, African American, and Asian American).[2]