Re: Update: Teaching Perl in the Humanities

[herveus]

Howdy!

That's way cool!

One thing that caught my eye was where you said ...one person who does Onomastics (placenames)... Did you mean that the person in question specializes in placenames, or did you mean to equate Onomastics with the study of placenames? Every use of the term I've seen simply meant the study of names, in general, so I twitched a bit. One of my hobbies is the study of medieval names and naming practices. I know hypocoristic, locative, patronymic, and many other fancy words.

[cyocum]

I actually did not encounter the word until I came to Edinburgh. The word Onomastics comes from the Latin word Onomasticus (ie. Onomasticon Goidelticum, is the place name book for Ireland) and before that Greek based on the ending (Greek neuters end in -on) so I assumed that the word ment placename in particular not just name (cf. Latin "nomen"; see also here). My friend actually does river names in particular but he says that he does onomastics.

In any case, you could be completely correct since I am basing my analysis solely on usage.

[herveus]

Howdy!

OK. That makes sense. Onomastics is, formally, the study of proper nouns, of which placenames is a useful subset. Personal names and bynames form another interesting subset or three. River names would be a suitable topic for onomastic study.