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Onomastics

Study of proper names

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated July 7, 2026

Onomastics (or onomatology in older texts) is the study of proper names, including their etymology, 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, with applications such as named-entity recognition, or recognition of the origin of names. It is a popular approach in historical research, where it can be used to identify ethnic minorities within populations and for the purposes of prosopography.

01Etymology

Onomastics originates from the Greek onomastikós (ὀνομαστικός, 'of or belonging to naming'), itself derived from ónoma (ὄνομα, 'name').

02Branches

  • Toponymy (or more precisely toponomastics), one of the principal branches of onomastics, is the study of place names.
  • Anthroponymy is the study of personal names.
  • Literary onomastics is the branch that researches the names in works of literature and other fiction.
  • Socio-onomastics is the study of names within a society or culture.
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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Onomastics”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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Related topics

Ancient Greek personal names

The study of ancient Greek personal names is a branch of onomastics, the study of names, and more specifically of anthroponomastics, the study of names of persons. There are hundreds of thousands and even millions of individuals whose Greek name are on record; they are thus an important resource for any general study of naming, as well as for the study of ancient Greece itself.

Galton-Watson process

The Galton-Watson process, also called the Bienaymé-Galton-Watson process or the Galton-Watson branching process, is a branching stochastic process arising from Francis Galton's statistical investigation of the extinction of family names. The process models family names as patrilineal, while offspring are randomly either male or female, and names become extinct if the family name line dies out (holders of the family name die without male descendants).

Hydronym

A hydronym is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans.