Word.ws English Dictionary

death-name

death-name noun: a name that is given (usually by a priest) to refer to someone who has died so that the living can avoid using the actual name of the dead person.

Noun

death-name (plural death-names)

  1. A name that is given (usually by a priest) to refer to someone who has died so that the living can avoid using the actual name of the dead person.
    • Indeed, those old insurgents, of 1868, are gradually being canonized with crimson death-names, because they neither knew dishonor, no, nor suffered it.1906, John Luther Long, The Way of the Gods, page 25
    • The priest at that time would give a death-name for the deceased, eventually to be inscribed on a stone monument.1968, Richard K. Beardsley, John W. Hall, Robert E. Ward, Village Japan, page 342

Examples of death-name in a sentence

  • Most death-names are not actually names but titles, given to persons on the death of a close relative.1995, Omega: An International Journal for the Study of Dying:
  • Using death-names instead of usual names is their way to protect the feelings of the bereft (using the name of the dead might arouse sad feelings).2015, Alan R. Kemp, Death, Dying and Bereavement in a Changing World:

Forms of death-name

pluraldeath-names

Questions about death-name

What does death-name mean?
Death-name means a name that is given (usually by a priest) to refer to someone who has died so that the living can avoid using the actual name of the dead person.
How do you use death-name in a sentence?
Most death-names are not actually names but titles, given to persons on the death of a close relative.
What part of speech is death-name?
Death-name is a noun.
What is the plural of death-name?
The plural of death-name is death-names.

Words near death-name in the dictionary

  1. death-knell
  2. death-knells
  3. death-like
  4. death-messenger
  5. death-messengers
  6. death-name
  7. death-names
  8. death-of-man
  9. death-pit
  10. death-price
  11. death-prices

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death-name (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “death-name.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death-name. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.