The Diverse Names Generator: An app for decreasing bias and promoting inclusion

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5541

Keywords:

pedagogy, teaching, diversity, example sentences, proper names, resource, website, mobile app

Abstract

It has been well established that example sentences in linguistics use a remarkably non-diverse set of proper names in terms of gender, culture, and ethnicity (e.g., Macaulay & Brice 1997, Cépeda et al. 2021, and Kotek et al. 2021). Here, we introduce a new resource, the Diverse Names Generator (DNG), which provides randomly selected proper names with IPA transcriptions from a user-contributed, linguist-curated database of names from a wide range of languages and cultures. Generating names randomly helps users to overcome unconscious bias that may lead them to default to using Anglophone, male-gendered names. The DNG can be accessed both through a website interface and through a downloadable Android app, both with offline capabilities. This novel resource is the first of its kind and can be used both while preparing examples ahead of time and while generating examples live in the classroom.

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Published

2023-04-27

How to Cite

O’Leary, Maura, Rainey Williams, and Mario Peng Lee. 2023. “The Diverse Names Generator: An App for Decreasing Bias and Promoting Inclusion”. Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8 (1): 5541. https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5541.