Words & WritingGreek → English
Anonymous
/əˈnɑːnɪməs/adjective
Of unknown or deliberately withheld authorship or identity.
The Greek roots
ἀν-
an-
without
ὄνυμα
ónyma
name
Literally: “without a name”
The story of the word
English took the word from Late Latin around 1600, and at first it described texts whose author had simply not been recorded rather than one who was hiding. Library catalogues then turned an adjective into a person, and for much of the eighteenth century Anon was the busiest author in English. The ὄνυμα here is the Aeolic form of ὄνομα, which is why so many English words end in -nym rather than -nom.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- c. 1600
Same family
synonympseudonymonomatopoeiaeponymous
In a sentence
The donation was anonymous, though everyone in the village had a theory.