namesake
/ˈneɪmseɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.10 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Something (especially a ship, a building, or a medical condition, symptom, or sign) that is named after someone or something.
Example Sentences
- "The statesman Winston Churchill has a namesake, the American novelist Winston Churchill."
- "Chris Evans, British DJ and media manipulator extraordinaire, is not to be confused with Chris Evans, Australia's shadow minister for family services, nor with Chris Evans, the late train robber of the wilds of west California, or indeed potentially hundreds of other namesakes. One unquestionable aspect of this Chris Evans is that he is unique."
- "Look at our namesakes too. There's Tom, of course - a bit creepy now but he definitely had his moments. There's Davy Jones out of the Monkees. Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones preferred Jones to his birth name Baldwin. And he's quite cool. There's an American brokerage firm called Edward Jones which perhaps isn't so cool."
- "Bill Sr's namesake, Bill Jr, is 30 years younger."
- "Bill Jr's namesake, Bill Sr, is 30 years older."
- "It is the only citation from 1902, and was clearly added to the manuscript at a late stage, being only one of two examples of the dictionary’s namesake actually discovered by Crooke."
Etymology
Mid-17th century. Equivalent to name + sake. From the phrase “for (one's) name's sake”, first found in Bible translations as a rendering of a Calque of Hebrew לְמַעַן שְׁמוֹ (l'má'an sh'mó) idiom meaning “to protect one's reputation” or possibly “vouched for by one's reputation”. A familiar example is in Psalm 23:3.