Anthroponomastik

Anthroponomastik, or anthroponymy, is a subfield of onomastics that examines personal names—given names, surnames, middle names, patronymics and matronymics—and their use across cultures and historical periods. It investigates origins and meanings, structural patterns, and the social functions of names, including how names reflect language contact, migration, religion, gender, class, and identity.

The work combines linguistic analysis with historical and sociological methods. Data come from civil and church records, censuses, immigration documents, and modern name databases; researchers also use surveys, interviews, and literary sources. Analyses focus on etymology, morphology, phonology, derivation, and semantic fields; they may study name formation processes such as affixation, compounding, and patronymic/matronymic systems, as well as naming norms, legal restrictions, and trends in popularity over time.

Cultural examples illustrate diversity: Icelandic naming traditions using patronymics and occasional matronymics; Russian and Slavic systems with patronymics; East Asian naming practices with surname-first conventions and generational naming; shifts due to globalization and diaspora.

Applications include genealogical research, historical demography, sociolinguistics, forensics, and policy analysis on naming laws. As a field, anthroponomastics intersects with linguistics, anthropology, and history. See also onomastics and anthroponymy.