Stokoe

Stokoe is an English-language surname. The name is associated with individuals who contributed to linguistics and other fields. The most prominent bearer is William C. Stokoe Jr. (1919–2000), an American linguist who played a pivotal role in the study of American Sign Language (ASL). In the 1960s, Stokoe and colleagues introduced the Stokoe notation, a transcription system designed to represent signs by decomposing them into components such as handshape, location, and movement. This framework provided one of the first rigorous analyses of the linguistic structure of ASL and helped establish ASL as a natural language rather than a set of gestures. Stokoe's 1960 article Sign Language Structure is widely cited as foundational in sign language linguistics and influenced subsequent work on sign phonology and morphology.

Apart from William Stokoe, the surname appears in various English and American contexts, carried by individuals in academia, business, and public life. Today, Stokoe remains a relatively uncommon surname, but its association with the field of sign language linguistics gives it a lasting presence in scholarly literature.

See also: Sign language; American Sign Language; Sign language notation.