Name

Introduction
Names and appellatives
The science of onomastics
- Categories of names
- Forms of personal names
The naming process
- Choice of personal names
- Choice of place-names
Historical and cross-cultural development of names
- Legal aspects of naming
- Personal names
  - European patterns of naming
  - Christian names
  - Family names
  - Other patterns of naming
- Place-names
  - Descriptive and commemorative place-names
  - Place-names reflecting historical influences

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images

Bar chart showing the 10 most given boy names in the U.S. in the 1880s, with John, William, and James as the top three, and counts for each name.

At a Glance

name summary

Quizzes

Map showing World distribution of the major religions.

It’s All in the Name

10:087 Ocean: The World of Water, two globes showing eastern and western hemispheres

You Name It!

Related Questions

How are familiar name forms such as Tom and Jim created from longer names?
How are incident names connected to the time or circumstances of a child’s birth?
How are newer personal names created from sounds and syllables?
How can a nickname replace a person’s official name in everyday use?
How can place-name studies reveal a region’s settlement history and past social conditions?
How can place-names provide evidence about the settlement history of the United States?
How did French place-names influence names in the southeastern and central United States?
How did Nieuw-Amsterdam become New York?
How did Puritan names such as Hope and Comfort express desired qualities?
How did ancient Assyrian and Babylonian names express religious beliefs?
How did some Indigenous peoples in North America turn traditional names into English last names?
How did surnames help distinguish people who shared the same given name?
How did the Aramaic name Kepha become Peter in the New Testament?
How did the Dutch place-name Haarlem become Harlem?
How did the Russian city name St. Petersburg change to Petrograd and Leningrad before returning to St. Petersburg?
How do Arabic surnames such as ibn ʿAbbās and al-Baghdādī distinguish people with the same given name?
How do Russian patronymics identify a person’s father?
How do Yoruba personal names preserve words from the Yoruba language?
How do geographers categorize settlement names and natural-feature names when studying place-names?
How do place-names in the United States reveal the history of colonization?
How does onomastics help scholars investigate names across languages and historical periods?
How does oral translation transfer a place-name between languages?
How does the name Singapore show the cultural influence of India in Southeast Asia?
When have some cultures changed a person’s name after puberty or an important achievement?
Which regions of the United States contain many Spanish place-names?
Why can the status of names such as the Roman Catholic Church be uncertain?
Why do governments sometimes rename cities after political changes?
Why do researchers often study personal names and place-names together?
Why was Léopoldville renamed Kinshasa?

Geography & Travel Languages

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External Websites

History Facts - The Most Popular Baby Name Every Year of the Last Century
History Facts - 7 Last Names That Used to Be Insults

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

name - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Name

linguistics

Written by

Ladislav Zgusta

Professor of Linguistics and of Classics; Director, Center for Advanced Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Author of Kleinasiatische Personennamen and others.

Ladislav Zgusta

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 3, 2026 •History

Name, a word or group of words used to refer to an individual entity (real or imaginary). A name singles out the entity by directly pointing to it, not by specifying it as a member of a class. It is possible to refer to the same entity, for example, a river, in two distinct ways: (1) “The Colorado is a beautiful river” and (2) “The river that flows through Austin is beautiful.” Because there is...

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