Anthroponymy

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (October 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,056 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Antroponimia]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Antroponimia}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Part of a series on
Linguistics
Outline History Index
General linguistics Diachronic Lexicography Morphology Phonology Pragmatics Semantics Syntax Syntax–semantics interface Typology
Applied linguistics Acquisition Anthropological Applied Computational Conversation analysis Corpus linguistics Discourse analysis Determinism Distance Documentation Ethnography of communication Ethnomethodology Forensic History of linguistics Interlinguistics Neurolinguistics Philology Philosophy of language Phonetics Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Text Translating and interpreting Writing systems
Theoretical frameworks Formalist Constituency Dependency Distributionalism Generative Glossematics Functional Cognitive Construction grammar Functional discourse grammar Grammaticalization Interactional linguistics Prague circle Systemic functional Usage-based Structuralism
Topics Autonomy of syntax Compositionality Conservative and innovative language Descriptivism Etymology Iconicity Internationalism Internet linguistics LGBTQ linguistics Origin of language Orismology Orthography Philosophy of linguistics Prescriptivism Second-language acquisition Theory of language Terminology
Portal
v t e

Anthroponymy (also anthroponymics or anthroponomastics, from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος anthrōpos / 'human', and ὄνομα onoma / 'name') is the study of anthroponyms, the proper names of human beings, both individual and collective.^[1] Anthroponymy is a branch of onomastics.

Researchers in the field of anthroponymy are called anthroponymists. Since the study of anthroponyms is relevant for several other disciplines within social sciences and humanities, experts from those disciplines engage in anthroponymic studies, including researchers from the fields of anthropology,^[2] history,^[3] human geography,^[4] sociology, prosopography,^[5] and genealogy.

Anthroponymists follow certain principles, rules and criteria when researching anthroponyms. The methods used for research are divided into two major categories: the collecting of anthroponymic information and the analysis and interpretation of anthroponyms. The collection of anthroponymic information includes: inscriptions, documents, onomastics-tax records, dictionaries, phone books, monographs, and websites, which are used afterward for mapping purposes. The analysis and interpretation of anthroponyms take into account the processing of the collection of the information gathered, which consists of linguistic analysis, comparative-historical method, geographical method, and statistical method.^[6]