Word.ws English Dictionary

deonym

deonym noun: a term which derives from a proper name (proper noun), such as brand name (genericized trademark), a given name or surname (eponym), or a place name (toponym).

Noun (1)

deonym (plural deonyms)

  1. A term which derives from a proper name (proper noun), such as brand name (genericized trademark), a given name or surname (eponym), or a place name (toponym).
    • […] increased occurrence of deonyms. Among them, nearly half come from trade names (company names, brand names or product names). This chapter aims to study deonyms deriving from trade names.2013, Oliviu Felecan, Onomastics in Contemporary Public Space, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 172
    • In linguistics, such terms that have managed the transformation from a proper brand name to a generic name are called deonyms […] The field of deonyms is not limited to brand names: The verb “röntgen,” for example, is derived from the discoverer of the rays named after him and is also a deonym.2021, Doris Berger-Grabner, Strategic Retail Management and Brand Management: Trends, Tactics, and Examples, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, →ISBN, page 318

Noun (2)

deonym (plural deonyms)

  1. Synonym of theonym.
    • A similar phenomenon occurs often, and also in connection with old Celtic toponyms which, if deonyms, were often suppressed by the growing might of the Church, […] [these other] deonyms serve to prove the Pelasgians spoke an Indo-European language far[…]1963, Congrès international d'études gauloises, celtiques et protoceltiques, Actes
    • It is a known fact that many Greek deonyms are not based [on] Hellenic roots (just as the oldest Sumerian place and river [name]s are neither Sumerian nor Semitic […]1979, The Journal of Indo-European Studies
    Synonyms:
    theonym

Examples of deonym in a sentence

  • A third name for common words from proper nouns is the lexical type deonyms (with the study of deonyms referred to as deonomastics) (cf., e.g., La Stella 1984).2025, Joachim Grzega, The Routledge Handbook of Eurolinguistics, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN:
  • The Anglo-Saxon root Tues is related to the Teutonic deonym Tiwas, in turn related to the Latin Deus, the Baltic Dievas, and the Sanskrit Deva.2012 December 6, C. Musés, Destiny and Control in Human Systems: Studies in the Interactive Connectedness of Time (Chronotopology)...

Synonyms of deonym

Forms of deonym

pluraldeonyms

Origin of deonym

From de- + -onym (“name”). Compare Italian deonomastica (“words of a language that are derived from given names, last names, ethnonyms, and toponyms”), from de- + onomastica.

From Latin deus (“god”) + -onym.

Questions about deonym

What does deonym mean?
Deonym means a term which derives from a proper name (proper noun), such as brand name (genericized trademark), a given name or surname (eponym), or a place name (toponym).
How do you use deonym in a sentence?
A third name for common words from proper nouns is the lexical type deonyms (with the study of deonyms referred to as deonomastics) (cf., e.g., La Stella 1984).
What part of speech is deonym?
Deonym is a noun.
What is the plural of deonym?
The plural of deonym is deonyms.

Words near deonym in the dictionary

  1. deontologies
  2. deontologism
  3. deontologist
  4. deontologists
  5. deontology
  6. deonym
  7. deonymisation
  8. deonyms
  9. deop
  10. deoperculate
  11. deopped

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deonym (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: “deonym.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deonym. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.