Onomastics (or onomatology in older texts) is the study of

proper name A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa''; ''Jupiter''; ''Sarah''; ''Walmart'') as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, pl ...

s, including their

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

, 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 Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

, with applications such as

named-entity recognition Named-entity recognition (NER) (also known as (named) entity identification, entity chunking, and entity extraction) is a subtask of information extraction that seeks to locate and classify named entities mentioned in unstructured text into pr ...

, or recognition of the origin of names. It is a popular approach in historical research, where it can be used to identify

ethnic minorities The term "minority group" has different meanings, depending on the context. According to common usage, it can be defined simply as a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half of a population. Usually a minority g ...

within populations and for the purpose of

prosopography Prosopography is an investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people, whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable. Research subjects are analysed by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line a ...

Etymology

''Onomastics'' originates from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

(), itself derived from ().

Branches

Toponymy Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for a proper na ...

(or more precisely toponomastics), one of the principal branches of onomastics, is the study of place names. *

Anthroponymy Anthroponymy (also anthroponymics or anthroponomastics, from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος ''anthrōpos'', 'human', and ὄνομα ''onoma'', 'name') is the study of ''anthroponyms'', the proper names of human beings, both individual and coll ...

is the study of personal names. * Literary onomastics is the branch that researches the names in works of literature and other fiction. *

Socio-onomastics Socio-onomastics is the study of names through a sociolinguistic lens, and is part of the broader topic of onomastics. Socio-onomastics 'examines the use and variety of names through methods that demonstrate the social, cultural, and situational c ...

or re-onomastics is the study of names within a society or culture.

References

External links

Lexicon of Greek Personal Names
a major research project of the British Academy, Oxford, containing over 35,000 published Greek names {{Authority control Folklore Lexicography

Etymology

Branches

See also

Organizations

References

External links