Religionym (from / religion, and / name) and confessionym (from / confession, and / name) are

polysemic Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a Sign (semiotics), sign (e.g. a symbol, morpheme, word, or phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word h ...

terms, and

neologisms In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

, that have several distinctive meanings, generally related (from the

semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

point of view) to religious (confessional) terminology, but are (in their specific meanings) defined and used differently among scholars. As a consequence of a wide variety of uses, specific meanings of those terms can be mutually distinctive, but also overlapping. Some scholars have used one or the other term as designations for a particular

onomastic 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 onom ...

class that encompasses the

proper names A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa''; ''Jupiter''; ''Sarah (given name), Sarah''; ''Walmart'') as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a Class (philoso ...

of religions and cults (like: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), while others have used the same terms (one or the other) as names for a particular anthroponymic class, encompassing the

that designate religious adherents (like: Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims). In scholarly literature, both terms (religionym and confessionym) are sometimes also used in much broader meaning, as designations for all terms that are semantically related to religious (confessional) terminology. In the English-speaking world,

lexical corpus In linguistics, the term lexis (from 'word') designates the complete set of all possible words in a language, or a particular subset of words that are grouped by some specific linguistic criteria. For example, the general term ''English lexi ...

that encompasses various words, terms and expressions that are related to the religious sphere of life is most commonly referred to as ''religious lexis'', or ''religious lexicon''. Those linguistic terms cover all of those widest meanings that were occasionally assigned (by some authors) to the terms ''religionym'' and ''confessionym'', thus relieving them of such general uses, and consequently allowing the standardization of more specific uses for both of those terms. In recent years, several scholarly attempts were made in order to differentiate between the existing uses, and thus define the preferred meanings of those terms, but no general agreement has been reached among scholars, and the use of both terms continues to depend on the context given to them by individual authors, in accordance with their preferred terminological traditions. The problem of linguistic standardization of various

(like religionym and confessionym) is generally related to the wider question of proper formation and use of

terms. Such issues have gained importance in scholarly circles, since international surveys among experts revealed the existence of similar challenging issues, related to the process of terminological standardization within the field.

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* * * * * * * * * * * * * {{refend Onomastics Religion Definitions Neologisms

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