Anthroponymy

Anthroponymy of individual and family names

Anthroponymy of individual and family names, and their mutual correlations, includes the study of:

• Personal names
• Given names
• Surnames
• Nicknames
• Pseudonyms
• Mononyms
• Matronyms
• Patronyms
• Eponyms
• Teknonyms

Anthroponyms of individuals can also be classified according to gender. Names of human males are called andronyms (from Ancient Greek ἀνήρ / man, and ὄνομα / name), while names of human females are called gynonyms (from Ancient Greek γυνή / woman, and ὄνομα / name).

Anthroponymy of group and population names

Anthroponymy of group and population names includes the study of demonyms (names of localized populations), ethnonyms (names of ethnic groups), as well as tribal names and clan names.

Anthroponymy and culture

Anthroponymy is a socio-cultural tool that can be used to find out about an individual's culture. Through the name of a person, their nationality, as well as their history, can be traced. Anthroponyms have both a national and cultural significance as they guarantee the preservation of linguistics, cultural, and historical information.

Related terms and processes

There are several specific terms and processes related to anthroponymy, like:

• anthroponymization, a process when an anthroponym is formed from an apellative, like when a surname is created from the name of ones occupation, thus forming an occupational surname. Such surnames are common in most languages, including English: Smith (from smith), Miller (from miller), Thatcher (from thatcher), Shepherd (from shepherd), or Potter (from potter).
• deanthroponymization, a process when an anthroponym becomes an apellative, like when the surname of the inventor Louis Braille was used to create a name for the writing system for visually impaired persons (braille).
• transonymization of anthroponyms into toponyms, a process when a human proper name is used to form a toponym (proper name of a locality; place name), thus creating an anthropotoponym, like when the name of Alexander the Great was used to create several astionyms (city names), including for the newly created city of Alexandria in ancient Hellenistic Egypt, or when the surname of Christopher Columbus was used to create several choronyms (region names), including names for the South American state of Colombia, and the Canadian province of British Columbia.
• transonymization of toponyms into anthroponyms, a process when toponyms (place names) are used to form human names (anthroponyms), thus creating various topoanthroponyms. Many surnames are created in this way, and they are known as toponymic surnames. Most demonyms (names for localized populations) are topoanthroponyms by formation, since they are usually created from toponyms, and also some ethnonyms are topoanthroponyms too (those that are formed from toponyms, and thus referred to as topoethnonyms). For example, geographic designations for the region of Black Mountain (Montenegro) and frontier region of Ukraina (Ukraine) were used to create not only demonyms for general populations for those regions, but also ethnonyms for modern ethnic Montenegrins and ethnic Ukrainians.

References

Sources

References

1. Boamfa, Ionel. (2017). "RESEARCH METHODOLOGY". 4th International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conferences on Social Sciences & Arts SGEM 2017.
2. [https://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/3450/Lefman-2013-InternationalisationOfPeopleNames.pdf Gary Lefman (2013): Internationalisation of People Names]