genomina

Genomina is a term encountered in onomastics and linguistics to denote the set of personal names used within a language or culture, particularly the given names or forenames assigned to individuals. It is used to distinguish these names from surnames or cognomina, which indicate family or clan membership, and from place or thing names. In scholarly work, genomina can refer to the pool of names that appear in a corpus—such as inscriptions, church records, census data, or literary texts—to study naming practices, trends, gender distribution, and social influences across periods.

Usage and scope vary by author and language. Some researchers treat genomina as an explicit category that encompasses male, female, and unisex given names, while others use the concept more flexibly to discuss the overall set of personal names used in a particular culture or era. The analysis of genomina often involves tracking popularity by time, region, religion, or social class, and it may reveal influences from religion, mythology, literature, migration, and political changes.

Relation to other onomastic terms is important: genomina are contrasted with nomina or cognomina (family or clan names) and with toponyms (place names). The term is not uniformly standardized in English-language usage, where “given names” or “forenames” are more common, but it appears in historical and cross-cultural studies to emphasize the system of personal names as a cultural variable.

See also: given names, forenames, surnames, cognomina, onomastics.