Words & WritingGreek → English
Anthroponym
/ˈænθrəpənɪm/noun
A personal name treated as an object of study.
The Greek roots
ἄνθρωπος
ánthrōpos
human being
ὄνυμα
ónyma
name
Literally: “human name”
The story of the word
Onomastics splits its material in two: toponyms for places, anthroponyms for people. The second half is ὄνυμα, a dialect form of ὄνομα, name, which is why the English family runs pseudonym, synonym, acronym rather than -onom. The term earns its keep in surname research, where an anthroponym like Miller or Papadopoulos records a trade or a father long before it records the person carrying it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scholarly coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
toponympseudonymsynonymanthropologyphilanthropy
In a sentence
The database holds every anthroponym in the parish registers back to 1650.
Byzantine anthroponyms often preserve a nickname that outlived the man.