In 2014, the main learned society of classicists in North America, the American Philological Association, changed its name to the Society for Classical Studies. The move had been a couple of years in the making and was ultimately put to a vote of the members, who approved it by a small majority.3 I voted against the motion but can’t say that I cared deeply one way or the other: despite being a linguist and therefore caring more than some about the power of rhetoric, I rarely believe that changing a name of an organization—or, say, a building—will have more than a cosmetic effect. Since I did and do think of myself as both a classicist and a philologist, I did not lose any sleep over the matter.
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