necronym
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A substitute name used to refer to a person who has died (instead of the name the person had in life).
Example Sentences
- "Some cultures have a taboo against uttering necronyms."
- "[…] necronym taboo (i.e., a prohibition on saying the names of people who have passed away) […]"
- "ln some cultures the dead are given a new proper name, known as a "necronym," to avoid breaking the taboo. Necronyms sound to me a great deal like the euphemisms we use, such as "passed on" or "passed away," to say that someone died ..."
- "Often a recently deceased person is referred to circumlocutory by a teknonym or necronym according to their relationship with some living [person]."
- "Each list ends with a necronym: John for Timothy, […]"
- "[…] a Penan may be designated by three sorts of terms: a personal name, a teknonym ('father of so-and-so', 'mother of so-and-so') and, finally, what one feels like calling a necronym, which expresses the kinship relation of a deceased relative to the subject: 'father dead', 'niece dead', etc. The western Penan have no less that twenty-six distinct necronyms, corresponding to the degree of kinship, relative age of the deceased, [etc]."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: νεκρός