Onomastics

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Study of proper names

title: "Onomastics" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["onomastics", "folklore", "lexicography"] description: "Study of proper names" topic_path: "general/onomastics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomastics" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Study of proper names ::

Onomastics (or onomatology in older texts) is the study of proper names, including their etymology, history, and use.

An alethonym ('true name') or an orthonym ('real name') is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Scholars studying onomastics are called onomasticians.

Onomastics has applications in data mining, with applications such as named-entity recognition, or recognition of the origin of names. It is a popular approach in historical research, where it can be used to identify ethnic minorities within populations and for the purpose of prosopography.

Etymology

Onomastics originates from the Greek onomastikós (), itself derived from ónoma ().

Branches

  • Toponymy (or more precisely toponomastics), one of the principal branches of onomastics, is the study of place names.
  • Anthroponymy is the study of personal names.
  • Literary onomastics is the branch that researches the names in works of literature and other fiction.
  • Socio-onomastics or re-onomastics is the study of names within a society or culture.

References

References

  1. (2013). "Onomastics and Big Data Mining".
  2. (2013). "Onomastics 2.0 - The Power of Social Co-Occurrences".
  3. Crymble, Adam. (2017-02-09). "How Criminal were the Irish? Bias in the Detection of London Currency Crime, 1797-1821". The London Journal.
  4. Crymble, Adam. (2015-07-26). "A Comparative Approach to Identifying the Irish in Long Eighteenth-Century London". Historical Methods.
  5. link. (2020-08-05 , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus project)
  6. "Online Etymology Dictionary". etymonline.com.
  7. link. (2021-02-25 , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus project)
  8. (2023). "Place Names: Approaches and Perspectives in Toponymy and Toponomastics".
  9. Bruck, Gabriele. (2009). "The Anthropology of Names and Naming".
  10. (1987). "Names in Literature: Essays from Literary Onomastics Studies".
  11. (2017). "Socio-onomastics:The pragmatics of names".

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onomasticsfolklorelexicography