onomastics

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥

Proto-Hellenic *ónomə

Ancient Greek ὄνομᾰ (ónomă)

Ancient Greek -ᾰ́ζω (-ắzō)

Ancient Greek ὀνομάζω (onomázō)

Proto-Indo-European *-tis

Ancient Greek -τις (-tis)

Ancient Greek -σῐς (-sĭs)

Proto-Indo-European *-kos

Ancient Greek -κός (-kós)

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Proto-Indo-European *-tós

Ancient Greek -τος (-tos)

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Ancient Greek -κός (-kós)

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Ancient Greek -τῐκός (-tĭkós)

Ancient Greek ὀνομᾰστῐκός (onomăstĭkós)bor.

English onomastic

Old English -as

Middle English -es

English -s

English onomastics

1936, from the adjective onomastic (“of or belonging to naming”) (1716) with a suffix -s, from French onomastique, from Ancient Greek ὀνομαστικός (onomastikós), from ὀνομαστός (onomastós, “named”), form of ὀνομάζω (onomázō, “I name”), from ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥ (“name”) (whence English name).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌɒ.nəʊˈmæs.tɪks/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌɑː.noʊˈmæs.tɪks/, /ˌɑː.nəˈmæs.tɪks/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

onomastics pl (plural only)

1. The branch of lexicology devoted to the study of names and naming, especially the origins of names.

   Synonym: onomatology

   Hypernyms: lexicology, (in sense of “origins”) etymology

   Hyponyms: anthroponymy, toponymy

   • 2024, Susie Dent, Guilty By Definition, Zaffre, page 65:

     Her father had long been a student of onomastics, and loved to unpack the names of people they encountered as children.

   • (Can we date this quote?), David Vaculík, “Parts of the city of Ostrava – The past and current state of urbanonymy”, in Masaryk University Brno‎^[1], page 405:

     From the point of view of onomastics, proper names fulfill many functions (individualizing, localizing, differentiating etc.).

Derived terms

• anthroponomastics
• coronomastics
• psychoonomastics
• socio-onomastics
• toponomastics

Related terms

• onomastic
• onomastically
• onomastician
• onomasticon

Translations

branch of lexicology devoted to the study of names

• Afrikaans: onomatologie, naamkunde, onomastiek
• Albanian: onomastikë (sq) f
• Armenian: հատկանվանաբանություն (hatkanvanabanutʻyun)
• Basque: onomastika
• Belarusian: анама́стыка f (anamástyka)
• Bulgarian: онома́стика (bg) f (onomástika)
• Catalan: onomàstica (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 專名學 / 专名学 (zhuānmíngxué)

• Czech: onomastika (cs) f
• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Dutch: naamkunde f, onomastiek (nl) f
• Esperanto: onomastiko, nomscienco
• Faroese: navnafrøði f, fólkanavnafrøði f
• Finnish: nimistöntutkimus
• French: onomastique (fr) f
• Galician: onomástica f
• German: Onomastik (de) f, Namenkunde (de) f, Onomatologie f, Onomasiologie (de) f, Namenforschung (de) f, Bezeichnungslehre (de) f
• Hungarian: névtan (hu), onomasztika (hu)
• Icelandic: nafnfræði f
• Ido: nomaro (io)
• Italian: onomastica (it) f
• Japanese: 固有名詞学 (こゆうめいしがく, koyūmeishi-gaku)
• Korean: please add this translation if you can
• Macedonian: ономатологија f (onomatologija), ономастика f (onomastika)
• Malay: onomastik
• Mongolian:

  Cyrillic: нэрзүй (nerzüj)

  Mongolian script: ᠨᠡᠷ᠎ᠡ
  ᠵᠦᠢ (ner-e ǰüi)

• Polish: onomastyka (pl) f, nazewnictwo (pl) n
• Portuguese: onomástica (pt) f
• Romanian: onomastică (ro) f, onomatologie f (rare)
• Russian: онома́стика (ru) f (onomástika)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: имено̀сло̄вље n, онома̀стика f

  Latin: imenòslōvlje (sh) n, onomàstika (sh) f

• Slovak: onomastika f
• Slovene: imenoslovje n, onomastika (sl) f
• Spanish: onomástica (es) f
• Swedish: onomastik (sv) c, namnforskning (sv) c
• Thai: นามศาสตร์
• Ukrainian: онома́стика f (onomástyka)
• Yiddish: אָנאָמאַסטיק f (onomastik)

See also

• etymology
• nomenclature
• nomenclaturist