Onomastics

Onomastics or onomatology is the study of the origin, history, and use of proper names. Onomastics originates from the Greek ὀνομαστικός (onomastikós), which translates to "of or belonging to naming," from ὄνομα (ónoma) meaning "name." Toponymy or toponomastics, the study of place names, is one of the principal branches of onomastics. Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names. Onomastics can be helpful in data mining, with applications such as named-entity recognition, or recognition of the origin of names. An orthonym is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study.

Gender studies

Onomastics have been used extensively in gender studies, to infer the gender of personal names in quantitative research. In most countries and cultures, the method is very accurate, with a precision in the range of 95–99%.

See also

• American Name Society
• Ancient Greek personal names
• English Place-Name Society
• Etymology, the study of word origins
• Extinction of surnames
• Guild of One-Name Studies
• Hydronyms
• International Council of Onomastic Sciences
• naming convention
• -onym, listing the technical kinds of names
• Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland
• Mononymous persons
• UNGEGN Toponymic Guidelines
• United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names

External links

• Onomastics at DMOZ
• Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, a Major Research Project of the British Academy, Oxford, contains over 35,000 published Greek names.