Névutója

Névutója is a rarely used term in Hungarian linguistics and onomastics. It is not included in major dictionaries and appears only in a small number of scholarly discussions, where researchers address mechanisms of name formation and the role of what could be described as a “name suffix.” In such contexts, the word is used to denote a suffixal element that, in combination with a base meaning “name,” yields a proper name or a term used as a name within a particular naming system.

Because névutója is not standardized, its precise meaning can vary between authors and fields. Some observers treat it as a theoretical label for a type of derivational suffix related to the formation of proper names, while others use it to describe the functional relationship between a base form and a following element in compounds that operate as names. The term thus functions more as a descriptive or theoretical pointer than as a fixed linguistic category.

Historically, the term surfaces sporadically in discussions about Hungarian word formation and onomastics, especially in analyses of how proper names are constructed or adapted in different historical periods or in contact with other languages. In practical terms, névutója has no single, widely accepted definition or orthography, and references to it are primarily of interest to specialists working on the morphology of names in Hungarian.

See also: onomastics, Hungarian morphology, derivational suffixes, proper names.