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An aptronym, aptonym, or euonym is a personal name aptly or peculiarly suited to its owner (e.g. their occupation). [1] Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post coined the word inaptonym as an antonym for "aptonym". [2] The word "euonym" (eu-+ -onym), dated to late 1800, is defined as "a name well suited to the person, place, or thing named". [3]
When a person (traditionally the wife in many cultures) assumes the family name of their spouse, in some countries that name replaces the person's previous surname, which in the case of the wife is called the maiden name ("birth name" is also used as a gender-neutral or masculine substitute for maiden name), whereas a married name is a family name or surname adopted upon marriage.
First/given/forename, middle, and last/family/surname with John Fitzgerald Kennedy as example. This shows a structure typical for Anglophonic cultures (and some others). Other cultures use other structures for full names. A surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family.
Nominative determinism, literally "name-driven outcome", [41] is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work which reflect their names. The name fits because people, possibly subconsciously, made themselves fit. Nominative determinism differs from the concept of aptronyms in that it focuses on causality. [31]
In some languages and countries, surname inflection (Czech: přechylování příjmení, Polish: odmiana nazwiska, Slovak: prechyľovanie priezviska) refers to the transformation of a surname, most often in the masculine gender, into a surname for a person of the opposite sex—thus usually a woman—by modifying the initial form of the surname.
The word matronymic is first attested in English in 1794 and originates in the Greek μήτηρ mētēr "mother" (GEN μητρός mētros whence the combining form μητρo- mētro-), [1] ὄνυμα onyma, a variant form of ὄνομα onoma "name", [2] and the suffix -ικός-ikos, which was originally used to form adjectives with the sense "pertaining to" (thus "pertaining to the mother ...
The usual noun and adjective in English is patronymic, but as a noun this exists in free variation alongside patronym. [a] The first part of the word patronym comes from Greek πατήρ patēr 'father' (GEN πατρός patros whence the combining form πατρο- patro-); [3] the second part comes from Greek ὄνυμα onyma, a variant form of ὄνομα onoma 'name'. [4]
An example of nobility is the name of the noted writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, where Tomasi is the surname and Lampedusa was the family's feudal property. An ordinary use is found in the name of the American actor Leonardo DiCaprio, of Italian descent (his surname is spelled as a single word, in accordance with standard American practice ...