English

Noun

neonymy ‎(uncountable)

1. The coining of new terms.
   • 1988, Richard Alan Strehlow, Standardization of Technical Terminology, ISBN 0803111835:

     After pointing out the basic principles of neonymy, the principal methods of neonymic formation of chemical terms are cited and illustrated by examples taken from recent nomenclature recommendations issued by the International Union of Biochemistry (IUB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Standards Organization (ISO), and other international organizations.

   • 1993, Helmi B. Sonneveld & ‎Kurt L. Loening, Terminology: Applications in Interdisciplinary Communication, ISBN 9027221316:

     The software packages which exist on the market would become more useful if they would pay much more attention to neonymy. Have people studied sufficiently the possibilities offered by terminology to perfect these software packages?

   • '2012, ‎Marian Hobson, Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines, ISBN 1134774443, page 26:

     Hence Derrida brings forward as strategies of deconstruction paleonymy and neonymy. The first is a formation recalling what was discussed a propos the bricoleur, where an old signifier brings with it archaisms into a changed context.

2. The process of giving a new name to an established concept; renaming.
   • 1885, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, page 286:

     According to the letter of the law I might be convicted of neologism, but its spirit would acquit me of neonymy in any unusual or unjustifiable degree.

   • 1994, Henry Hanoch Abramovitch, The First Father: Abraham, page 93:

     Most recently, Communist leaders of spiritual-political movements likewise practiced neonymy, such as the lawyer Vladimir Ulyanov who became Nicolai Lenin, Marxist Revolutionary.

   • 2002, Joe Lockard, “Somewhere Between Arab and Jew: Ethnic Re-Identification in Modern Hebrew Literature”, in Middle Eastern Literatures, volume 5, number 1:

     Rather, identity reformation and mass 'political neonymy' focused on an anti-European Hebraicization that induced writers such as Rachel, SY Agnon and many others to reject their Ashkenazic birth names and adopt Hebrew ones.