onomastika

Onomastika, or onomastics, is the scholarly study of proper names and naming practices. It examines the origin, form, meaning, and social use of names across languages and cultures, and seeks to understand how names arise, change, spread, and function within societies. The field encompasses a broad range of name types and languages, and often connects linguistic analysis with history, anthropology, and sociology.

The main subfields include anthroponymy, the study of personal names; toponymy, the study of place names; hydronymy for water-body names; ethnonyms for names of ethnic groups; and in some traditions, corporate or brand names. Onomastics also covers the mechanisms of naming, such as etymology, phonological change, borrowing, translation, and semantic shift. Some researchers distinguish onomastics from onomasiology, which focuses on the naming process and the creation of terms for concepts.

Methods commonly used in onomastics combine philology, historical linguistics, and archival research with modern data sources such as birth records, gazetteers, dictionaries, and large name corpora. Comparative and diachronic approaches illuminate how names reflect contact between languages, migration, cultural identity, religion, and policy.

Historically, interest in names spans antiquity to modern times, with formal, systematized approaches developing through the 18th to 20th centuries as part of broader linguistic and cultural studies. Applications of onomastics include linguistic research, genealogy, lexicography, geographic naming policy, heritage documentation, and branding.