Onomastics

Description

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Onomastics or onomatology is the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. The word is Greek: (from (ónoma) „name“). Toponymy or toponomastics, the study of place names, is one of the principal branches of onomastics. Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names. For most if not all cultures, only one name is needed to indicate certain important or well-known persons without ambiguity. In others, a single personal name may be insufficient, requiring alteration to a hypocoristic/diminutive nickname or addition of a byname based on a specific individual“s traits, family, home, occupation, or other. In most of the world, individually-based bynames have become hereditary family names, perhaps retaining little descriptive resemblance to the ancestral namesake“s original byname.