ABSTRACT
Scientific investigation of the origin (development, age, etymology), the meaning, and the geographic distribution of names ( proper noun). Onomastic subdisciplines include anthroponymy (the study of personal names), hydronymy (the study of names of bodies of water), and toponymy (the study of geographic place-names), among others. Because placenames and personal names are among the oldest and most transparent linguistic forms, they are an important source of hypotheses about the history of language, dialect geography and language families. More recently, sociolinguistics (name-giving and use in society), psycholinguistics (psycho-onomastics and the physiognomy of names), pragmalinguistics, and text linguistics have taken an active interest in onomastics. Onomastics also offers new insights into historical processes (preand early history, folklore, among others) as well as geography and natural history.
