Aptronym

An aptronym, aptonym, or euonym is a personal name aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner.

History

The Encyclopædia Britannica attributes the term to Franklin P. Adams, a writer who coined it as an anagram of patronym, to emphasize "apt".

According to Frank Nuessel, in The Study of Names (1992), an aptonym is the term used for "people whose names and occupations or situations (e.g., workplace) have a close correspondence."

In the book What's in a Name? (1996), author Paul Dickson cites a long list of aptronyms originally compiled by Professor Lewis P. Lipsitt, of Brown University. Psychologist Carl Jung wrote in his book Synchronicity that there was a "sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities".

Nominative determinism is a hypothesis which suggests a causal relationship based on the idea that people tend to be attracted to areas of work that fit their name.

Notable examples

Inaptronyms

Some names are very inappropriate for what the person does, being called inaptronyms by Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post.

See also

  • -onym
  • Nominative determinism, the hypothesis that a person's name can have a significant role in determining key aspects of their job, profession or even character

This page was last updated at 2024-02-13 22:06 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari