Questions tagged [onomastics]
Questions about the study of proper names.
16 questions
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US -> American, Canada -> Canadian, etc
What is the proper onomastic descriptor for words like American, Canadian, etc to describe nouns, like Bank?
For example:
American Bank
Canadian Bank
British Bank
French Bank
Japanese Bank
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In Croatia, the first two consonants in river names are often 'k' and 'r', respectively. How to estimate the probability of that happening by chance?
In Croatia, the first two consonants in many river names are 'k' and 'r', respectively: Karašica (two rivers with the same name), Krka, Korana, Krbavica, Krapina and Kravarščica. Mainstream ...
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What do you call the adjective phrase attached to some historical persons? E.g. Erik the Red
Many historical persons have full names but also a popular adjective phrase attached to them, such as Eric the Red (Erik den Røde in Danish), Gorm the Old (Gorm den Gamle in Danish), Alexander the ...
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In Search of an Etymological Name Database
Do such things even exist? Attempts at searches turn up rather limited and uninformative sites dedicated to parental demographics, and that's not what I'm looking for.
Specifically, I'm looking for a ...
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What is the the etymological origin of the name Calvin?
Doing research (question was also asked on The Latin StackExchange Website) I came across the name having a French origin meaning "bald". However, I also came across that the name has a ...
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Why do Arabic names still have their meanings?
As someone born in Britain whose first language is English, but with origins in Pakistan and an understanding of both Punjabi and Arabic, it's always seemed to me that most modern Arabic names are ...
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Is there a generic English term for the relation actor:actress?
I am looking for a generic term describing the relation actor:actress or Paul:Paula, like actress is a ____ of actor. In German, there is the term Movierung for this, and it works in both directions (...
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Are there geographic or cultural patterns in surname etymologies?
I was reading in Wikipedia that the origins of European surnames can be classified into categories like patronymics, occupational, toponymics and nicknames.
If this classification is old or incomplete ...
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How to classify Compound Strings?
My team and I have been working on a project that involves classifying different strings in a text, or more specifically, Wikipedia Infoboxes. For example, Barack Obama would be classified as a ...
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What linguistic impact, if any, has the the Roman three name naming system left on modern Romance and European languages?
The ancient Romans had a three name system (tria nomina): praenomen, the birth/given name; the nomen, like a family name but marking the person as belonging to a specific gens; and the cognomen, of ...
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In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
In french, there are many female given names that are derived from male given names. Those names are often obtained by adding "ine", "ette", "e" or "a" at the end of the male name. Examples include
...
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Patterns and trends for startup names
Does anyone have any stats, research papers, etc. surrounding trends for startup naming.
It seems quote popular to, for example: remove vowels from words, start the company name with a lower-case ...
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"Dexenoethnic exonyms": typological studies, references and/or resources?
By "dexenoethnic exonym" (my own coinage for the purpose of this particular question) I mean an ethnonym/glottonym derived from a name originally applied to a (language of a) different ethnic group, ...
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Markers for feminine and masculine names in Old Norse?
A question in two parts:
One, is there a way, other than original context, to determine whether a name in Old Norse is generally masculine or generally feminine?
Two, how would one go about ...
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Is there a term for names with the "X the Y" construction?
For example, "Ivan the Terrible" or "Conan the Barbarian".
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Morphology of proper names
I'm wondering if there are any general morphological properties of proper names. If a word is used as a name, it will be constrained by whatever syntactic constraints that language uses from proper ...
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