Dictionary

necronym en · NOUN

Etymology

From necro- + -onym; from Ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós, “death”) + ὄνομα (ónoma, “name”).

Meanings

1. The name of a person who has died.
   • […] necronym taboo (i.e., a prohibition on saying the names of people who have passed away) […] 2007, Claire Bowern, Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide, Springer, →ISBN, page 227:
   • Some cultures have a taboo against uttering necronyms.
2. A substitute name used to refer to a person who has died (instead of the name the person had in life).
   • Often a recently deceased person is referred to circumlocutory by a teknonym or necronym according to their relationship with some living [person]. 1999, David McKnight, People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classification Among the Lardil of Mornington Island, Oxford University Press, USA:
   • Each list ends with a necronym: John for Timothy, […] 2003, The Genealogist, volumes 17-18, page 212:
   • 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 ... 1998, Louise Harmon, Fragments on the Deathwatch, MA: Beacon Press:
3. A name or name element which indicates that someone the person was closely related to is dead.
   • An individual takes a necronym, or death-name, when some of his primary relatives die, namely a parent, a sibling, ... 1978, Victor T. King, Essays on Borneo societies:
   • […] 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]. 1966, Claude Lvi-strauss, The Savage Mind, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 191:

Forms

Relateds

deadname · patronym · dead-naming