William Bright

William O. Bright was an American linguist and toponymist born August 13, 1928, in Oxnard, California, and died October 15, 2006, in Louisville, Colorado, who earned his bachelor and doctoral degrees in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1949 and 1955 and taught linguistics and anthropology at UCLA from 1959 to 1988 before moving to the University of Colorado at Boulder. He was an authority on the native languages and cultures of California, especially the Karuk language, and became the first non-tribal member honored as an honorary member of the Karuk tribe for his contribution to the language revival; his expertise extended to other Native American languages including Nahuatl, Kaqchikel, Luiseno, Ute, Wishram, and Yurok, and to South Asian languages including Lushai, Kannada, Tamil, and Tulu. He edited the journal Language for twenty one years through 1987, served as president of the Linguistic Society of America in 1989, and published works including Native American Placenames of the United States in 2004 and the co-edited The World Writing Systems in 1996.