[ad. Gr. ἐπώνυμ-ος (a.) given as a name, (b.) giving one’s name to a thing or person, f. ἐπί upon + ὄνομα, Æol. ὄνυμα name.]
1. One who gives, or is supposed to give, his name to a people, place or institution; e.g., among the Greeks, the heroes who were looked upon as ancestors or founders of tribes or cities. Also in Lat. form eponymus.
1846. Grote, Greece, I. vii. (1869), I. 150. Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnesus.
1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann. (1863), I. II. vii. 481. The legendary eponymus of the district.
1877. Merivale, Rom. Triumv., ii. 35. An ancient patrician race, which claimed as its eponym, Julus, the son of Æneas.
1883. Q. Rev., April, 297. The eponymus of which [Skinner’s Horse] was his bosom friend.
b. transf. One ‘whose name is a synonym for’ something.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, x. 306. Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus are the Eponyms of Idyllic poetry.
1875. Merivale, Gen. Hist. Rome, ii. (1877), 7. Saturn becomes the eponym of all useful and humane discovery.
1875. Bryce, Holy Rom. Emp., xi. (ed. 5), 177. Charles [the Great] … had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire.
2. Assyriology. A functionary (called limu in Assyrian) who, like the ἄρχων ἐπώνυμος at Athens (see EPONYMOUS 2), gave his name to his year of office. Also attrib., as in eponym-list, -year; eponym-canon, the record that gives the succession of these officers.
1864. Rawlinson, Anc. Mon., II. viii. 261. The list of eponyms obtained from the celebrated ‘Canon.’
1886. C. R. Conder, Syrian Stone-Lore, ix. 325. The Sabeans also adopted the Assyrian system of eponyms to mark the year.
3. [ad. Gr. ἐπώνυμον an additional designation, cognomen.] A distinguishing title.
1863. Miss Yonge, Chr. Names, II. 264. Jarl … was a favourite eponym.
1881. Fair Trade Cry, 11. We are the modern Phœnicians, or to take a lower eponym, the Pickfords of the world.
Hence Eponymic a., of or pertaining to an eponym; that is an eponym. Eponymism, the practice of accounting for names of places or peoples by referring them to supposed prehistoric eponyms. Eponymist = EPONYM 1. Eponymize v. trans., to serve as eponym to.
1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann. (1863), II. IV. i. 179. The young strength of the eponymic colonists.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., I. 7. Eponymic myths which account for the parentage of a tribe by turning its name into the name of an imaginary ancestor.
1883. Sat. Rev., 23 June, 784. Its patron saint or eponymic hero.
1858. Gladstone, Homer, I. 347. The foregoing sources of eponymism. Ibid., I. 85. Nor does he establish any relation whatever between any of the four races and any common ancestor or eponymist.
1862. Ansted, Channel Isl., 320. The eponymist of St. Helier’s was confounded with Hilarius Bishop of Poitou.
1866. J. Rose, trans. Ovid’s Fasti, Notes 236. Pallas herself eponymizes the Pali fire-worshippers.
