618 words
ღ ღ ღ
Words ending with the suffix “nym” (= name) are manifold in English...the type most people are familiar with and have recourse to are synonyms and antonyms, the stuff of thesauruses. Then there’s the ubiquitous and sometime annoying beast that is the acronym, the not-who-it-seems pseudonym and the metonym where a thing or objects stands in symbolically for something else that it represents❶. There’s also the eponym, from which we get the adjective “eponymous”, where something—a place, a movement, a behavioural trait, a trend and so on—is named after a particular person❷. Alexander the Great had a particular obsession with naming cities he conquered after himself, but many examples are legion – we have Machiavellian, Reaganomics, Marxism, Odyssey (from Odysseus), Caesarian, Quixotism, Gerrymander, and so on infinitum.
Two other “nyms” of interest are demonyms and aptronyms. A demonym (from demos “people” or “tribe”) identifies a group (inhabitants, residents and natives) in relation to a particular place . Demonyms for inhabitants of particular countries are for the main directly formed from the territorial name (eg, British from Britain) but a few interestingly vary from the norm. Residents of Lesotho are Basotho and the people of Vanuatu are known as Ni-Vanuatu.
Most demonyms are self-evident and flow from the city name itself (eg, Venetian) but others are less straightforward and more imaginative. The demonym for Buenos Aires is Porteño (which is also the name for the (male) residents of Valparaiso (females = Porteña). Those residing in Warsaw are Varsovians, Manchester (Mancunians), Gothenburg (Gothenburgers – what else?), São Paulo (Paulistanos), Rio de Janeiro (Cariocas), Mexico City (Capitalinos), Moscow (Muscovites), Guangzhou (Cantonese – from the city’s former name), Oxford (Oxonians), Cambridge (Cantabrigians), Glasgow (Glaswegians), Liverpool (Liverpudlians). Newcastle residents are Novocastrians, Tasmanians are Taswegians (informal) and those from Naples are called Neapolitans.
Aptronyms❸, AKA “aptonyms” or “euonyms”, come into play to describe where a personal name is aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner’s vocation or situation...or as psychoanalyst (and Michael Fassbinder impersonator) Carl Jung put it, “a grotesque coincidence between a man’s name and his peculiarities”. The phenomena has given rise to a hypothesis—nominative determinism—which suggests a casual relationship, ie, people are attracted to occupations and callings which suit their name.
 |
| Ringing a Bell! |
A cornucopia of aptronyms
Real life throws up a bountiful and seemingly inexhaustible supply of examples of aptronyms❹, many of which are jocular in nature. Among other aptronymic personages there has been William Wordsworth the poet; Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone; Margaret Court the tennis player; a meteorologist and TV weather presenter called Sara Blizzard; an undertaker named Robert Coffin; a neurologist with the name Dr Russell Brain; a poker player named Chris Moneymaker; the men’s world record holder for the 100m sprint in athletics is Usain Bolt; the list could go on.
The antithesis of an aptronym or aptonym is an inaptonym, meaning the name born by a person is an inappropriate one, eg, someone beset by misfortune is called Mr Lucky. A real life example is a Catholic Filipino clergyman with the name Cardinal Sin.
Footnote: the English in particular have embraced the inventive spirit when it comes to demonyms, especially specialising in quirky, abstruse ones...Slough folk are known as Paludians or Sluffs, Shrewsbury has its Salopians, Blackpool residents, following Liverpool’s lead naturally are called Blackpudlians, but it also has the informal name of “Sand Grown’uns” (‘Top 8 UK demonyms’, (raconteur.net)).
▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫ ▫
❶ the crown is a metonym for the monarchy, the Kremlin for the government in Russia, Silicone Valley for the American hi-tech industry, etc.
❷ or sometimes after a fictional character
❸ coined by Franklin P Addams to describe names that were especially apt
❹ adding a measure of plausibility to the normative determinism argument
No comments:
Post a Comment