By Svante Strandberg
In: Ortnamnssällskapets i Uppsala årsskrift 2020
Summary
The profile given here of the distinguished researcher Staffan Nyström was presented on 9 December 2019 at a seminar in Uppsala, arranged to mark Nyström’s retirement from his professorship at Uppsala University.
The author highlights the considerable thematic and geographical range of Nyström’s achievements in onomastics. He has devoted a great deal of attention to rural place-names, but also to names in urban settings. He has published works with a strong element of applied, down-to-earth research, but is at the same time a leading onomastic theoretician. Nyström grew up in Södermanland (Sörmland), and several of his books deal with the place-names of that province; at the same time, he is highly international in his outlook and has appeared at many academic meetings abroad. Names policy and standardisation is another area in which he has made important contributions.